Iraq

Leaders of journalists unions from around the world travelled to Baghdad at the weekend for a conference on support for media in Iraq— the first international meeting of any kind in the city since the war began six years ago. The Iraqi Journalism Summit 2009 was organised by the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) and the Iraqi Journalists Syndicate and was warmly welcomed by Iraqi Prime...

Spanish investigating judge Santiago Pedraz has decided to reinstate murder charges against the three US soldiers responsible for shelling the Hotel Palestine in Baghdad on April 8, 2003, killing two cameramen, one of them the Spanish. The order came on Thursday. Spain’s National Court had ordered the withdrawal of the charges for lack of evidence in May 2008. José Couso, a Spanish cameraman...

Iraqi trade minister Abdelfalah Al-Soudani’s has decided to withdraw the lawsuits he had brought against two independent daily newspapers, Al-Mashriq and Al-Parlament, over articles linking him directly to cases of alleged corruption. The minister had been demanding 150 million dinars (95,000 euros) in damages from Al-Mashriq and 50 million dinars (31,500 euros) from Al-Parlament. The move was...

US President Barack Obama intends blocking the court-ordered release of photos depicting the abuse of prisoners by US military personnel in Afghanistan and Iraq. “Given the administration’s pledge last month not to fight the court ruling, as well as President Obama’s emphasis on promoting transparency and open government when he took office, the decision is very disappointing,” Paris-based...

There has been a wave of lawsuits against independent Iraqi news media in recent weeks. Three daily newspapers and a TV station have so far been sued for defamation by senior government officials over reports about corruption, according to Paris-based Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). “These attacks on independent Iraqi media run counter to the progress towards democracy which the entire nation has...

There has been an alarming wave of politically motivated criminal lawsuits in Iraq's Kurdistan filed against mostly independent journalists as well as blatant violations of the region's new press law. The law has no provisions for jail terms for journalists, but journalists are still being imprisoned, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has reported. In a letter to the prime minister of the...

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is closely following the imminent trial of two suspects who have been charged with plotting to murder Ahmed Mira, editor-in-chief of the Sulaymania, Iraq-based ‎magazine Livin. ‎Mira and his lawyer, Othman ‏Sidiq, told CPJ that investigations have been completed and that two ‏suspects have been formally charged with planning to murder Mira. The first...

The Iraqi military should drop a criminal lawsuit it filed Monday against a newspaper and a TV channel for misattributing a quote to its spokesman, the Committee to Protect Journalists has said. Iraqi and international press reported Monday that Major General Qassim Atta al-Moussawi, spokesman of the Baghdad Military Command Operations, has said that the military has initiated a lawsuit to shut...

The Iraqi journalist who threw his shoes at ex-US President George W Bush faces trial next week for assaulting a foreign leader after an appellate court refused to reduce the charge, the Associated Press (AP) has reported quoting a judicial official. Muntadar al-Zaidi, 30, who won folk hero status throughout the Arab world for his protest, has been in custody since the December 14, 2008 outburst...

Journalists in at least three Iraqi cities were harassed on Wednesday as police, soldiers, prisoners, some government employees, and displaced persons kicked off the early voting phase of Iraq's provincial councils elections, according to local and international news reports and journalists who spoke to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). In the southern city of Basra, 15 Iraqi reporters...