Iraq

14 August 2006

Journalist Carroll asked to be shot

CERTAIN she would be murdered by the men who kidnapped her on a Baghdad street and fatally shot her translator, American journalist Jill Carroll begged her captors at one point to use a gun to end her life rather than a knife. "Promise me you will use this gun to kill me by your own hand. I don't want that knife, I don't want the knife, use the gun," Carroll remembered crying hysterically to the...

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10 August 2006

Journalist was held near US base

HABANIYAH, Iraq -- U.S. Marines who cracked the Jill Carroll kidnapping case say the American journalist was held for a time in a home within sight of a sprawling U.S. military base in western Iraq. The Marines said the big break occurred May 19 when they searched a suspect's home near the Taqqadum logistics base seven weeks after Carroll's release. Jake Cusack, 24, a first lieutenant from Grand...

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10 August 2006

Four arrested in US journalist’s kidnapping

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Aug. 9 — American marines have captured four Iraqi men suspected of playing a role in the kidnapping of an American journalist, Jill Carroll, in Baghdad in January, American military officials said Wednesday. Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell IV said the four men, whom he declined to identify, were arrested in the Sunni Arab-dominated region west of Baghdad. On Wednesday, an American...

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10 August 2006

Four arrested in connection with kidnapping of Jill Carroll

(CPJ/IFEX) - New York, August 9, 2006 - The Committee to Protect Journalists welcomes reports that the U.S. military arrested four Iraqi men in the kidnapping of American freelance journalist Jill Carroll in Baghdad today. "In a time of increasing dangers to journalists in Iraq, it is certainly welcome news that these four individuals have been detained and will be held accountable for the...

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8 August 2006

2 Iraq journalists reported slain in Iraq

BAGHDAD, Iraq — Two Iraqi journalists have been killed in separate incidents in Baghdad, police said Tuesday. Mohammed Abbas Hamad, 28, a journalist for the Shiite-owned newspaper Al-Bayinnah Al-Jadida, was shot by gunmen at he left his home Monday in the Adil section of western Baghdad, police Lt. Mohammed Khayoun said. Late Monday, police found the bullet-riddled body of freelance journalist...

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8 August 2006

US troops 'assault Kirkuk journalists'

Several journalists in Kirkuk have accused American and Iraqi security forces of assaulting them and their crews as they tried to report on the worsening security situation in the northern city. In at least six separate incidents since June, Iraqi reporters said they had been physically beaten, had their equipment confiscated and been falsely accused of "terrorism". Senior US and Iraqi military...

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1 August 2006

Iranian TV reporter killed in Baghdad

NAJAF, Iraq - The Baghdad correspondent of the Iranian government-run Al-Alam television station was assassinated in the western part of Baghdad, one of his colleagues said Tuesday. Adil al-Mansuri, an Iraqi who was in his 20s, was driving his car after dropping his wife at her family's home in Amiriyah when gunmen stopped him Monday and shot him dead, said Aysar al-Yasiri, the network's...

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11 July 2006

Family of Jordanian journalist to sue US

AMMAN, Jordan, July 11 (UPI) -- The family of a Jordanian journalist killed in U.S. shelling of Baghdad a day before it fell in April 2003 will sue the White House and the Pentagon. The widow and daughter of the Qatari al-Jazeera television correspondent Tarek Ayyoub will file a lawsuit through the American judiciary on charges that the shelling of the news agency's offices in Baghdad was pre...

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5 July 2006

Going in harm's way

Iraq is the deadliest war on record for news people. The Committee to Protect Journalists reports that 74 journalists have been killed there since the bombing of Baghdad began in 2003. And there have been plenty of near-misses. NBC's David Bloom died of a pulmonary embolism in the early weeks of the war while riding in a tank. ABC's Bob Woodruff was seriously injured last January, and CBS's...

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2 July 2006

They told me I'd be the next reporter to die

THE voice on the telephone was that of a trusted contact whose advice on security in Iraq has often been a source of reassurance. But the message he passed on last Wednesday and the urgency of his tone could hardly have been more alarming: my name had been placed on a hit list by one of the groups whose death threats have spread fear through countless communities in this stricken country. “A...

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