Deathtrap Iraq

A bomb blast outside Iraq's national journalists' union in central Baghdad wounded the union's head and three others on Saturday. The explosion apparently targeting Muaid al-Lami, head of the Iraqi Journalists' Syndicate, caused no deaths, news agencies reported. Reuters reported: "Some vehicles outside caught fire and it shattered all the glass in the building," union member Hassan al-Aboudi, who...

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has welcomed the arrest of suspects in the killing of three journalists and a media worker in Mosul. CNN reported that two suspects have been arrested in Mosul, according to Gen Jalal Tawfeeq, military operations commander of Nineveh province, who spoke to al-Sharqiya. According to Reuters, Brig-Gen Khalid Abdul Sattar, the spokesman for Iraqi military...

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has welcomed the release of a cameraman held by US forces in Iraq, and called on the military to release a freelance journalist working for Reuters who has been held since Tuesday. Omar Husham, 28‎, a cameraman with Baghdad TV‎, a satellite channel owned by the Iraqi Islamic Party, was freed on Friday without charges after one day in custody, according to...

An Iraqi journalist for one of the Middle East's best-known satellite television stations escaped assassination Tuesday when a bomb was found under the seat of his car as he prepared to leave home for work, the Associated Press (AP) reported. The attempt against Jawad al-Hattab, Baghdad bureau manager for Al-Arabiya television, illustrates the dangers facing Iraq despite the decline in violence...

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has expressed alarm at the detention of two Iraqi journalists by the US military in separate incidents and calls on the authorities to make clear any charges against them or release them immediately. Omar Husham, 28, was arrested along with his father and two brothers at his house in the predominantly Sunni neighborhood of Adhamiyah, the Associated Press...

Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has voiced deep shock and sadness at the death of the sister of journalist Sadeq Jaafar Bashir, sub-editor on the Kurdish monthly review Araa (Opinions), who was gunned down in a murder attempt against him at his home in Baghdad. According to Paris-based RSF, 217 journalists and media assistants have been killed in Iraq since the start of the war in March 2003...

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has welcomed the release of a Reuters cameraman held by US forces in Iraq for three weeks without charge, and it called on the military to charge or release an Associated Press journalist who has been held since June. Ali al-Mashhadani, 39, was freed thursday, Reuters reported. He had been arrested on July 29 in Baghdad by US military forces while he was...

The government of South Korea has ordered home documentary filmmaker Kim Young Me from Iraq, where she was on assignment, the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has eported. Kim returned to Seoul on August 9, after leaving Iraq on August 3. She had been embedded with American forces in Iraq's dangerous Diyala province, when US military authorities were told she did not have her...

The US government's attempts to flout news-gathering privilege hit another road-block on August 11 when a court denied its request to block an amicus curiae brief signed by numerous news organisations in support of CBS in its effort to quash a government subpoena. The case concerns an interview with US Staff Sergeant Frank Wuterich by Scott Pelley, aired on March 18, 2007 on "60 Minutes". Wuterich...

Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has condemned a shooting attack on journalist Amanaj Khalil, of the weekly Rudaw, on August 1 in Kani Kardatt, a region to the west of Sulaymaniyah in Iraqi Kurdistan. Khalil, who was not injured, had reportedly been getting threats because of one of his articles. "This attempt to murder Khalil should be taken seriously by the authorities in Kurdistan," Paris-based...