Haider Hamza Claimed American Troops Killed Iraq’s Gays. What Other Lies Does He Have?

Haider Hamza, the Iraqi who went by “Hussam” and claimed U.S. soldiers were responsible for the murders of gay men there, appears to be cleaning up his act. Speaking to Illinois College students last week, he reportedly didn’t make any such allegations of American troops! But he did find a new way to make his story more compelling!

Gone are the allegations against U.S. forces in Iraq — concluded to be entirely fictitious, and likely made up to generate support (emotional and, naturally, financial) to gay men targeted in Iraq — but new claims are popping up to make Hamza’s story all the more titillating, notes Michael Petrelis, who spotted a whole new, previously unmentioned, part of Hamza’s story. As he got Kent State University’s independent news site to report:

Hamza was arrested, kidnapped and separated from others during his time in Iraq.

He was arrested 68 times while on assignment for arriving on a site of an attack before the military. Hamza said he and fellow journalists simply followed the smoke. They learned quickly that where there’s smoke, there’s a story.

As an Iraqi citizen himself, Hamza was viewed as a traitor of his own country and was kidnapped twice.

But this is brand new information, Petrelis reports, and was never part of Hamza’s story before. Interesting, because you would think a man capable of creating such tall tales would have used this biographical information before to make his stories more compelling to audiences. And yet, he didn’t.

Which isn’t to say Hamza didn’t endure these atrocities. But really, which outlandish claims of his should we accept as truth, and which should we reject as pure fiction in an unfortunate stab to drum up attention to the cause? Because he’s lost all credibility, and should probably shut up for the time being.