LOS ANGELES/BEIRUT ¨C Houssam Azzam was 17 in 2004 when the U.S. military took over his hometown of Fallujah and detained him as part of a roundup of young men in western Iraq.
His photo, fingerprints, and iris scans were entered into a database, alongside a trove of information about him and his family, even though he said he was only ever involved in peaceful protests against the U.S. presence.
¡°They were occupying forces. They violated an entire country¡¯s rights so of course they would violate an individual¡¯s human rights,¡± he said, referring to the U.S. retaining his biometric data.
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