Deathtrap Iraq

“You have guns, we have pens,” was the message that the Sulaymaniyah-based independent newspaper Hawlati (Citizen) printed on an otherwise blank front page on February 24 in a bold protest against a spate of threats, harassment and physical violence against journalists in Iraqi Kurdistan in the run-up to a parliamentary election on March 6. Hawlati’s front page is just one example of the growing...

Iraqi reporter Hussam Daoud al-Eqabi, who was seized by unidentified armed men on Wednesday, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). Al-Eqbi is a political reporter for Al-Ahed, a radio station in Kirkuk affiliated with radical Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr. According to Abed Abu Zahra, head of Al-Ahed, four unidentified gunmen abducted Hussam Dawood al-Eqabi, 22, in front of his...

Iraqi photographer, Ibrahim Jassam, of Reuters, who had been held by the US military since his arrest on September 1, 2008, was released Wednesday. Jassam was arrested by the US military in Mahmudiyah, 30 km south of Baghdad, and was held at Camp Cropper, near Baghdad airport. Iraq’s central criminal court on November 30, 2008 said he had no case to answer and must be released, but the US army...

Imad Abadi, the Al-Diyar TV host who suffered serious gunshot injuries to the head and neck in an attack on November 23 in Baghdad, was flown to the German city of Munich on December 3 for brain surgery, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. RSF said it was relieved to learn that the operation went ahead without any problem in Munich’s Grosshadern Clinic on December 7. Abadi’s brother...

Imad Abadi, the star anchor of the independent satellite TV news station Al-Diyar, was badly injured in a clearly targeted shooting attack Monday night in Baghdad, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. Abadi was shot twice by unidentified gunmen as he was driving through the central Baghdad neighbourhood of Salihiya. “He suffered a gunshot wound to the head and another to the neck,” Al...

Orhan Hijarn, an Iraqi cameraman working for privately-owned satellite TV station Al-Rashid, was killed by a roadside bomb Wednesday in Kirkuk, 240 km north of Baghdad, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. Abdallah Zadeh, an Al-Baghdadiya TV reporter, suffered minor injuries. The two journalists had been out reporting and were caught in the explosion as they were returning to their homes...

An Al-Rasheed television cameraman was killed by an explosion in front of his home in Kirkuk Wednesday, the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has reported. Orhan Hijran, an 18-year-old cameraman with the Baghdad-based independent al-Rasheed satellite channel, was killed when a bomb exploded in front of his house in Al-Khadhrah neighborhood, in southwestern Kirkuk, Bureau Chief...

An enquiry into the October 4 assault on journalist Zohra al-Musawi was opened Wednesday by Iraq’s High Council of Judges in response to a request by a group of journalists to the council’s president, Judge Medhat al-Mahmoud, who has a reputation for conducting thorough and detailed investigations, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. “A judicial enquiry is the logical, essential and...

Iraqi journalist Zohra al-Musawi was assaulted by unidentified men in the centre of Baghdad on October 4 while police and other members of the security forces look on without intervening, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. Although Musawi, a presenter for satellite TV station Al Iraqiya, was wearing an Islamic veil at the time, clothes were torn off her as she was being beaten by her...

The US is still refusing to release Reuters photographer Ibrahim Jassam, who has begun his second year of detention by the US military in Iraq although he has never been formally charged. Jassam is currently the only journalist held in Iraq by the US forces. Jassam was arrested by US and Iraqi soldiers in the south Baghdad district of Mahmoudiyah on September 1, 2008. The Iraqi central criminal...