Democracy Now! interviews Grégoire Deniau, a French TV journalist, over how he was handled by U.S. troops in April 2004 in Fallujah.

An excerpt from his conversation with Amy Goodman (rush transcript):

They break the door. And I just had the time to say that I am a journalist, and so they don't kill me. But after I show them my identity card, my French passport, my press card, they see my camera. But they say, ok, we go first to the headquarters. And when we come to the headquarters, they put us -- I was with a photographer, camera photographer, and with two people of the Red Crescent. And they put, you know, something on the head. They led us in the desert in the knees. And during hours and hours they just say some stupid thing about the French people that we don't do the war with them. We have -- we are not men. We are just like dogs and all this time with something on the head, you know?

AMY GOODMAN: What do you mean something on the head?

GREGOIRE DENIAU: I have my – you know, they put us -- yeah, with some gaffer to be sure that it is impossible to see nothing and --

AMY GOODMAN: They put a hood on your head and gaffers tape over your head? So you look like what we’ve seen at Abu Ghraib, when a bag is put over someone's head?

GREGOIRE DENIAU: Exactly, but then on this time we don’t know nothing about Abu Ghraib. You know? It was before. So nobody knows about that, and when I go out, I tell my company that I have -- said something like that happened to me. And in my company they say, “No, maybe you -- they are crazy; you see one American crazy people, but it is impossible that the American army do something like that.” I say, “I tell you I was not alone. That is true, and I can show you something, because the one soldier take the camera of my friend, the camera photographer, and he say, “Okay, it’s a good souvenir for you from – and it’s something, a souvenir from the American, okay? Bye-bye.” And take a photo of us with the camera of my friend, so we have the photo of this moment. And after one day they take us in a visit with a truck, and they say --

AMY GOODMAN: Before that, you had the bag over your head and what did they do with you? How long did you have the bag over your head? Did you just stand in a certain position?

GREGOIRE DENIAU: I stand just in my knees, you know, like I am praying. They say you have to stay like that during hours and hours. It was on the morning, and I was released during the night. So, you know, it's a long -- a long day. A very long day. And they release us in the desert in the middle of nothing and just saying to us -- it was a young lieutenant, he say, “On the south Baghdad – on this way is Baghdad, on that way it’s Fallujah, but take care, because we shoot everybody who is walking during the night.” So I say, “What are you doing? You are going to kill us.” “You do what you want. It’s not my problem, that there are others and I just keep -- let you here.” And they go. So, we are alive, we stay alive, so there is no problem for the moment. But it was before Abu Ghraib, and nobody knows that this kind of comportment for the American, you know?

AMY GOODMAN: When they had you on your knees for hours with a bag over your head with gaffers tape around it, they knew you were a French journalist? Did they say things to you throughout the day?

GREGOIRE DENIAU: Of course, they know that I am a French journalist. I show them my press card, my identity card, my passport, my French passport. They have my camera with the tape inside the camera. They see the tape. They see that I was filming during the morning inside Fallujah, but I was filming some dead people in the streets and going with an ambulance and some people of Red Crescent taking the people to put it in the cemetery, and something like that. So they see the work I was doing. They knew. They knew. And they say, “Yeah, yeah, we know. You are French. But in France, there is no journalist. You are – you prefer the Arabic people. You prefer the Iraqi. You are like – you don't like the Americans, so we don't care about you. You are like nothing, like dogs.” And one moment I asked for water. And that, they say, “No, the water is only for the U.S. soldiers. There is no water for you.”