Iraq: Body of abducted editor of state-run newspaper found in Baghdad

The body of an Iraqi newspaper editor kidnapped last week was found Sunday in Baghdad, police said. Gunmen ambushed Flayeh Wadi Mijthab, editor of the state-owned Al-Sabah newspaper, last Wednesday in eastern Baghdad as he was heading to work. His 25-year-old son and driver were left behind, the Associated Press (AP) reported.

Mijthab's body was discovered Sunday near the Firdaws mosque in the al-Bonuk area of northeast Baghdad, and handed over to a local morgue, police said. The editor's son arrived to receive the body Sunday afternoon and prepare it for burial, they added.

An Iraqi man reads an appeal to free kidnapped US journalist Jill Carroll published in the Iraqi Al-Sabah al-Jadid newspaper in Baghdad, February 2006. Al-Sabah managing editor Filaih Wadai Mijthab, who was kidnapped by gunmen last week, has been found dead in a Baghdad mortuary.(AFP/File/Sabah Arar)

“We blame the bad security situation in Baghdad for his murder,” Falah al-Mishaal, the editor of the paper, told the New York Times. “And we blame those who use religion as a tool to justify their deeds.” He added that he believed that Mijthab’s work on behalf of the Saddam Hussein government might have resulted in his assassination. Shiite militias have singled out a number of people with ties to the former government.

In all, 106 journalists have been killed since the Iraq war began, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) in New York. Eighty-four of them were Iraqis. They include five employees of The Associated Press who have died violently in Iraq since the war began. The most recent victim was Said M Fakhry, 26, an AP Television News cameraman shot dead May 31 in his Baghdad neighborhood.

Mijthab, 53, left his home for work along with his eldest son and a driver when gunmen in three vehicles stopped them in Baghdad’s eastern neighborhood of Al-Habibiya and ordered him out of the vehicle at gunpoint, according to the Journalistic Freedoms Observatory (JFO). Mijthab was taken to an unknown location; his son and the driver were not seized.

Insurgents have frequently targeted Al-Sabah and other state-run media because of their ties to the US-supported Iraqi government. On February 4, gunmen abducted Abdulrazak Hashim Ayal, 45, an editor and news presenter at the state-run radio Jumhuriyat al-Iraq, and his cousin, in Baghdad’s western neighborhood of Al-Jihad. The two were found dead, with several gunshot wounds, the next day.

Forty-nine journalists, including Mijthab, have been abducted since 2004, according to CPJ. Karim Manhal, abducted on March 17; Marwan Ghazal and Reem Zaeed, abducted on February 1, 2006; and Bilal Taleb Abdelrahman al-Obeidi, abducted on August 14, 2006, remain missing.

Following is a chronology of those reported killed in the past three months.

1. April 5 - The body of Iraqi journalist Khamail Muhsin is found with a gunshot wound to the head and signs of torture. She was last seen on April 3.
2. May 6 - Russian freelance photographer Dmitry Chebotayev is killed in a roadside bomb attack north of Baghdad. He is the first Russian journalist to be killed in Iraq.
3. May 9 - Two Iraqi journalists, a clerk for their media firm and their driver are dragged from their car and killed by gunmen southwest of Kirkuk near the small town of Rashad.
4. May 17 - Two ABC journalists, cameraman Alaa Uldeen Aziz and soundman Saif Laith Yousuf, are killed in Baghdad. They were returning from the Baghdad bureau when their car was attacked.
5. May 21 - Militants kidnap and kill Ali Khalil from the Azzaman newspaper.
6. May 28 - Abdul Rahman al-Isawi, a reporter for the independent National Iraqi News Agency (NINA), is taken from his village of Amiriyat al-Falluja, west of Baghdad.
7. Gunmen kill Mahmoud Hakim Mustafa, editor-in-chief of Hawadith weekly newspaper, near his home in Kirkuk.
8. May 30 - Nazar Abdul Wahid al-Rahdi, a reporter for the Aswat al-Iraq news agency and New Sabah newspaper, is shot dead in Amara, 365 km (230 miles) south of Baghdad.
9. May 31 - Saif M. Fakhry is shot and killed near his home in Baghdad. He was an Iraqi cameraman working for the Associated Press (AP), the fifth AP employee to die violently in Iraq.
10. June 7 - Sahar al-Haideri, a female journalist working with the independent Aswat al-Iraq news agency, is shot dead in the al-Hadbaa neighbourhood of northeastern Mosul. The Ansar al-Sunna group later claim responsibility.
11. June 11 - Aref Ali, a journalist working for the Aswat al-Iraq news agency is killed while on assignment near the town of Khalis in Diyala province.
12. June 14 - Filaih Wadi Mijthab, managing editor of the state-run al-Sabah daily newspaper, is killed a day after he was abducted in Baghdad.