A news presenter for the local affiliate of state-run television station Al-Iraqiya TV was gunned down by assailants in the Iraqi city of Mosul on Tuesday.
Mohieddin Abdul Hameed al-Naqib, 49, was leaving his house outside Mosul on his way to work at around 8:30 a.m. on Tuesday, when a car with two to three men inside drove by and opened fire at him, killing him instantly, Samir Sloka, the head of Al-Iraqiya TV’s newsroom, told the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).
“We condemn this senseless crime and demand that the authorities do everything in their power to locate the perpetrators,” said CPJ Middle East Senior Programme Coordinator Joel Campagna. “We send our deepest condolences to Mohieddin Abdul Hameed al-Naqib’s family and friends.”
Since 2005, al-Naqib worked at Nineveh TV, the local affiliate of the state broadcaster Al-Iraqiya TV in Mosul. Prior to 2003, al-Naqib worked for the government-run Al-Iraq TV in Baghdad.
Sloka said al-Naqib was the target of unspecified death threats. Al-Naqib is the 14th journalist from the Iraq Media Network, the state-run media group composed of print and broadcast outlets, to be killed, according to CPJ. That number is the highest such tally of any news organisation.
Many Iraqi journalists have been killed or kidnapped because of their work for outlets and stations that are perceived as supportive of the Iraqi government and critical of the insurgency. Last month, Sarwa Abdul-Wahab, a female Iraqi journalist who had written critically of insurgent groups was also killed in Mosul after she resisted an abduction attempt by unidentified men.
Al-Naqib is the 130th journalist killed in Iraq since the US led-invasion of Iraq in March 2003, according to CPJ research. Another 50 media workers have been killed. The vast majority of those killed have been local Iraqis.
According to Paris-based Reporters sans Frontières (RSF), his death brings to 216 the number of media workers killed in Iraq since the start of the war in March 2003, 12 per cent of whom have died in Mosul, the country’s second most dangerous city for the media.
Head of programmes for the channel in Mosul, Samir Slouki, told RSF that al-Naqib had “like very many others, received threats from terrorist groups."
“The journalist was ambushed in front of his home, an attack which bears the hallmarks of a number of armed groups that are the scourge of the press in Iraq. Even without any claim of responsibility, it is highly likely that the journalist was targeted because he worked for a state media," RSF said.
“We urge the government of Nuri al-Maliki to open an investigation into who was responsible and to bring them to trial. The impunity that has prevailed in the country for more than five years only encourages the killers of journalists to continue their evil work," it added.
