Deathtrap Iraq

Bradley Manning, a 22-year-old US army intelligence analyst, was charged on Tuesday with leaking a video of a US army helicopter attack in Baghdad in July 2007 in which two employees of the Reuters news agency were killed. Currently held in a US military detention centre in Kuwait, he is accused of divulging confidential information, a US army release said. Posted on the Wikileaks website on April...

A reporter for independent news outlets was found shot to death Thursday morning in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul after being abducted Wednesday in Arbil, capital of Iraqi Kurdistan, according to news reports. Authorities in both cities must conduct a thorough investigation into the murder of Sardasht Osman and bring those responsible to justice, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said...

The Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), the two parties that control Iraq’s northern Kurdish region, have reached a “tacit strategic accord” to restrict the freedom of journalists as much as possible, according to Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). “Anything goes for the KDP and the PUK as far as muzzling the press is concerned,” RSF said. The security forces...

Saad al-Aossi, editor-in-chief of the critical Iraqi weekly Al-Shahid, has gone missing, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). Armed men entered al-Aossi’s home in central Baghdad on the morning of April 14, seized his computer and took him to an unknown location, according to local and regional news reports. The identity of the armed men remains unclear; various news sources...

Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has expressed concern over the continuing wave of press freedom violations in Iraq, and reiterated its appeal to the Iraqi parliament to pass a law protecting journalists. “Many journalists and media have been the target of physical attacks or lawsuits since the March 7 parliamentary elections,” Paris-based RSF said. “The threats come from both the security forces...

Anti-riot police assaulted journalists covering two different protests in Sulaimaniya in Iraqi Kurdistan on Saturday and Tuesday, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). Several journalists told the New York-based CPJ on Tuesday that police prevented them on Saturday from covering clashes between security forces and students who had taken to the streets to protest the Ministry of...

Iraqi journalist Omar Ibrahim Al-Jabouri, the satellite TV station Al-Rasheed’s head of public relations, lost both of his legs Tuesday as a result of a targetted car-bombing in Baghdad, according to Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). A total of three people were seriously injured when the bomb, attached to the underside of Al-Jabouri’s car, exploded as he set off this morning for work with two...

Disturbing video footage showing a 2007 US military airstrike that killed about a dozen Iraqis in eastern Baghdad, including a Reuters cameraman and assistant, was released Tuesday by WikiLeaks, a website that publishes sensitive leaked documents. The video raises questions about the actions of US military forces and the thoroughness and transparency of the investigation that followed, the...

An assassination attempt was made Sunday against Muaid al-Lami, head of the Iraqi Journalists’ Syndicate, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has said. Four unidentified gunmen in a car intercepted and opened fire in Baghdad’s Al-Qadisiyya district on a two-car convoy carrying al-Lami and four other individuals, according to news reports. Al-Lami told New York-based CPJ that he was not...

Political rivalry and tension prompted by the March 7 legislative elections in Iraqi Kurdistan resulted in a wave of violence against independent and opposition journalists in the days preceding the election and on election day itself. Journalists describe it as the most harrowing period since the US invasion of Iraq in April 2003. “I am really concerned about these press freedom violations, which...