Deathtrap Iraq

Ali Al-Mashhadani, an Iraqi cameraman employed by the Reuters news agency, was arrested on July 26 by US troops while he was visiting the Iraqi parliament press centre in Baghdad's Green Zone. "Mashhadani has been held without charge by the US military since 26 July and must be freed at once," Paris-based Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) said. "It is unacceptable that US troops arrest a journalist...

In many countries, media workers such as journalists, camera/sound operators and translators are being killed due to their jobs, according to just published research by the University of Otago, Wellington. The study in the international journal 'Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health', examined five authoritative data bases to find the number and risk factors for all media worker homicides...

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has voiced its protest against the detention without charge of an Associated Press (AP) journalist who was seized by US and Iraqi forces last month in the Iraqi city of Tikrit. Ahmed Nouri Raziak, a 38-year-old cameraman who has worked with AP Television News since 2003, was detained at his home in the Iraqi city of Tikrit on June 4, AP reported, and is...

Reuters has urged the US military to hand over video footage from US attack helicopters and other materials relating to the killing of two Iraqi staff in Baghdad a year ago. Photographer Namir Noor-Eldeen, 22, and driver Saeed Chmagh, 40, were killed in a US helicopter air strike in eastern Baghdad on July 12, 2007. Noor-Eldeen and Chmagh had gone to the area after hearing of a military raid on a...

Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has condemned the arrest of journalist Ahmed Al-Majoun in a raid by US and Iraqi soldiers on his home in Tikrit (180 km north of Baghdad) early on June 24. His son was also arrested. Majoun heads a journalists union based in Salah El Din, the province of which Tikrit is the capital. No reason has been given for their arrests. "We are disturbed to see that, just a...

Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has welcomed the "transparency" of a US Defence Department report released on June 16 confirming that US soldiers were responsible for the fatal shooting of Reuters soundman Waleed Khaled in Baghdad on August 28, 2005. Khaled drove with Reuters cameraman Haider Kadhem to the Baghdad district of Al-Adil to cover a situation in which an Iraqi police unit had been...

Mohieddin Abdul Hameed al-Naqib, 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 Tuesday. 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 fired at him, killing him instantly, Samir Sloka, the head...

The 2005 shooting death of a Reuters journalist in the midst of a firefight in Baghdad was justified because US soldiers believed the camera protruding from an unmarked car was a rocket propelled grenade, the Pentagon's internal watchdog has concluded. In an 82-page report, the Defense Department's inspector general also said that Reuters safety practices contributed to the death of sound...

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...

Iraqi journalist Mohiddin Abdulhamid al-Nakib, gunned down Tuesday outside his home in the northern city of Mosul, 370 km north of Baghdad, according to the 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...