Iraq

A Baghdad court gave two alleged Sunni militants life sentences Wednesday after convicting them of the 2004 abduction of French journalists Christian Chesnot and Georges Malbrunot and their Syrian guide, who were held hostage for 124 days, according to Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). “We hail this conviction and we hope that the impunity so long enjoyed by the...

Tension is brewing between Kurdistan’s ruling parties and security forces, on the one hand, and its journalists and news media, on the other. Magazine editor Hemn Karim’s detention for more than 24 hours during the weekend and a spate of libel actions are the latest examples of this fraught climate. A wave of defamation suits seems to be eroding press freedom, especially as they often are being...

Sardasht Osman, a young journalist who was abducted on May 4 in Erbil and was found dead two days later in Mosul, was killed for refusing to cooperate with Ansar Al-Islam, a radical Islamic group linked to Al-Qaeda, not because of his work as a journalist, a Kurdistan government commission of enquiry has said. Appointed by the Kurdistan Regional Government's president, Massoud Barzani, the...

Safa al-Din Abdel Hamid, an Al-Mosuliya television presenter who was shot Wednesday morning in front of his Mosul home by gunmen firing from a speeding car, according to New York-based press freedom group Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). Abdel Hamid was the second Iraqi television anchor to be killed in as many days. Riad al-Saray, an anchor for Al-Iraqiya was gunned down in Baghdad on...

Policemen fired at the Baghdad home of the head of the Iraqi Press Agency, Haydar Hassoun Al-Fizaa, on August 27, injuring his wife and other relatives, before searching the premises and damaging furniture, Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. The attack on Al-Fazaa's home in the east Baghdad neighbourhood of Al-Shaab was carried by police officers...

The body of Kamal Qassim Mohamed, the deputy editor of the magazine Al-Mustaqila, was found in Baghdad Tuesday, six days after his abduction by gunmen. He had been shot. His killers have not been identified. “The authorities have a duty to shed light on Kamal Qassim Mohamed’s murder,” Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) said. “A proper investigation must be carried out...

Security forces, police officers and members of the Asayesh intelligence service harassed a group of journalists on August 11 in Chamchamal, a town located between Sulaymaniyah and Kirkuk, in Iraqi Kurdistan, and even fired at one of them, according to Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). The journalists were covering a protest against a water shortage in the town. The...

The Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), headed by the president of the Kurdistan Regional Government, Massoud Barzani, has been waging a hate campaign for the past week against Lvin magazine, accusing it of besmirching the memory of Barzani’s father, the late Kurdish nationalist leader Mullah Mostafa Barzani. The offending article in Lvin magazine, published on August 1, consisted of an interview...

The Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP) has sued magazine Rojname for $1 billion. A report published in the magazine on July 20 had accused the KDP and its ruling coalition partner, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), of helping smuggle refined petroleum products into Iran in violation of the international sanctions imposed on the Islamic Republic by the UN Security Council. The article accused the...

The Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) led by Masoud Barzani, president of the Kurdish Regional Government, is pursuing a defamation complaint against an opposition weekly, Rozhnama. The complaint, filed under Saddam Hussein-era criminal statutes, seeks US$1 billion in damages and the closing of the newspaper, according New York-based press freedom group Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). "It...