Iraq

(RSF/IFEX) - Madrid investigating judge Santiago Pedraz announced on 24 May 2007 that he has rejected an appeal by the prosecutor’s office against his decision to indict three US soldiers for the murder of Spanish cameraman José Couso, who was killed when a US tank shelled the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad on 8 April 2003. Prosecutor Jesús Alonso had appealed against the indictment on the grounds...

New York, June 1, 2007—The Committee to Protect Journalists mourns the slayings of four Iraqi journalists during an especially deadly week in the country. Nazar Abdulwahid al-Radhi, 38, a correspondent for the independent news agency Aswat al-Iraq and Radio Free Iraq, was gunned down in the southern city of Al-Amarah on Wednesday morning. Three men wearing white uniforms and riding in a pickup...

(RSF/IFEX) - Reporters Without Borders has voiced deep shock at the murders of four Iraqi journalists by armed groups within a space of five days. The body of a local TV station employee was found in the boot of his car in the northern city of Kirkuk on 26 May 2007. A Turkmen journalist was killed in Kirkuk on 28 May. Gunmen burst into the home of a journalism teacher and contributor to several...

A US military report that exonerated US troops in the killings of two Al-Arabiya journalists at a Baghdad checkpoint in 2004 has failed to address contradictory witness reports, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has said. This includes statements from Al-Arabiya employees that at least two US soldiers fired directly at the journalists’ vehicle, newly declassified records show. The report...

The International News Safety Institute (INSI) has dismissed the Iraqi government's restrictions on news coverage of bombings as irrelevant to the safety of journalists. According to a report on state-run Al-Iraqiyah television last week, an Interior Ministry spokesman said the ministry had decided to prevent news teams from approaching the scenes of incidents out of concern for their safety...

(RSF/IFEX) - Reporters Without Borders has condemned the 20 May 2007 murder in Baghdad of Ali Khalil, of the daily "al-Zaman" ("Time"), and the kidnapping on 9 May of the journalist Salam Duhi al-Sudani. "Less than three days after the death of two journalists working for the US television network ABC, the profession is once again in mourning for this murder," the worldwide press freedom...

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Militants kidnapped and killed a journalist from one of Iraq's most popular national newspapers in southern Baghdad on Sunday, his employers said on Monday. Ali Khalil had become a father only a few days before he was killed, they said. He was the 105th journalist to be killed in Iraq since hostilities started four years ago. Khalil, 21, worked for the Azzaman newspaper and had...

Two Iraqi ABC News journalists were killed Thursday in Iraq, ABC News President David Westin has said. Cameraman Alaa Uldeen Aziz, 33, and soundman Saif Laith Yousuf, 26, were returning home from work at the ABC News Baghdad bureau Thursday afternoon when their car was ambushed and they were killed by unknown assailants. Aziz, Yousuf, and another colleague were on their way back home.The three men...

MADRID, Spain – Prosecutors on Friday appealed a judge's decision to charge three U.S. soldiers with homicide in the death of a Spanish journalist in Iraq, a court official said. Prosecutors at the National Court said the troops from the U.S. 3rd Infantry, based in Fort Stewart, Ga., committed no crime when their tank fired a shell at Baghdad's Palestine Hotel in 2003, killing Jose Couso, a...

The police fired warning shots at the scene of a double bombing Tuesday, enforcing an order banning news photographers and TV camera operators from filming the aftermath of deadly bombings, the Associated Press (AP) has reported. The Iraqi government said it decided last weekend to keep photographers and camera crews away from blast sites to prevent them from damaging forensic evidence. Press...