Deathtrap Iraq

Sulaimaniya, Apr 17, (VOI) - Security forces in the city of Sulaimaniya arrested on Tuesday the editor-in-chief of (Lavin) Magazine, Ahmed Mera, after publishing an article on the repercussions of Iraqi President Jalal Talabani's recent illness, an official from the Kurdish magazine said. "After publishing an article titled ‘Legacy of the sick man’ on the repercussions of the recent illness of...

A US soldier facing trial in absentia next week in Italy for shooting dead an Italian hostage negotiator and wounding a journalist at a road block in Baghdad has justified the shooting. Mario Lozano of the US Army’s 69th Infantry Regiment told the New York Post in his first major interview since the 2005 incident that when confronted with the vehicle moving at speed towards his checkpoint he did...

Reporters Without Borders today voiced deep concern about the fate of the 12 media personnel held hostage in Iraq after the security forces found the body of Othman Al-Mashhadani, the correspondent of the Saudi daily Al-Watan. “The figures are horrendous, but measures still have not been taken to put an end to the butchering of journalists and their assistants,” the press freedom organisation said...

April 10, 2007 | It's no secret that the period of time between 9/11 and the invasion of Iraq represents one of the greatest collapses in the history of the American media. Every branch of the media failed, from daily newspapers, magazines and Web sites to television networks, cable channels and radio. I'm not going to go into chapter and verse about the media's specific failures, its...

BAGHDAD, 9 April 2007 (IRIN) - BAGHDAD, 9 April 2007 (IRIN) - The arrests, abductions and murders of journalists in Iraq are severely limiting the ability of media outlets to effectively report the escalating humanitarian crises in the war-torn country, specialists say. In the run-up to the fourth anniversary of the fall of Baghdad, on 9 April, media associations are calling on the government and...

The fourth anniversary of the still unexplained killing of three journalists by US troops in Baghdad was marked Sunday by a preceding week of shocking attacks on journalists in Iraq. Four journalists were killed during the week. Thursday last saw the brutal murder of Khamaail Mohsin, a mother of three and journalist with Radio Free Iraq, the US-funded Radio station in Arabic, and the bombing of...

NEW YORK In a remarkable op-ed column, published today in the Charlotte Observer and by several other newspapers across the country over the past eight days, Stephen E. Wright, editorial page editor of the San Jose Mercury News, describes sending his 18-year-old son off to Iraq this month -- and calls it "the wrong war." Wright says that his son is part of the "surge" of troops to Iraq, adding...

Reporters Without Borders today learned of the death of two Iraqi journalists at the hands of armed groups in Baghdad, bringing to 155 the number of media staff killed in Iraq since the start of the conflict in March 2003. The worldwide press freedom organisation on 16 March held a protest in Paris in which 153 activists and volunteers held up photos of 153 leading French journalists behind a...

A total of 97 journalists and 37 media support staffers have been killed in the line of duty since the war began on March 20, 2003. The media death toll in Iraq has steadily climbed since 2003, when 14 journalists — most of them reporters working for the international press— were killed. In 2004, 24 journalists were killed, followed by 23 deaths in 2005, and 32 deaths in 2006. The 32 deaths in...

Four years after the US-led invasion to topple Saddam Hussein, Iraq remains the deadliest country in the world for the press as local journalists continue to suffer disproportionately from the violence, research by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) shows. The bodies of correspondent Atwar Bahjat (inset), cameraman al-Falahi, and engineer Khairallah were found near Samarra, a day after the...