Conflict Journalism

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...

The Afghanistan government has ordered a TV station to suspend broadcasts of Al-Jazeera’s English-language programmes, the station’s director said Tuesday. A statement from Lemar TV said the Ministry of Information and Culture, which oversees media in Afghanistan, did not provide reasons for the order. The station complied, but contested the order before the Supreme Court on Tuesday, the...

The Committee to Protect Journalists has called on the United States to release Bilal Hussein, an Iraqi photojournalist for The Associated Press, who has been held in a U.S. prison in Iraq for a year without charge. Hussein, a Pulitzer Prize winner, was taken by U.S. forces on April 12 in the western city of Ramadi, the capital of Iraq’s Anbar province, and held in a U.S. prison in Iraq for...

Taliban militiamen have beheaded Afghan journalist Ajmal Naqshbandi who had been held capitive since March 4, news reports have said. The death of Naqshbandi came on a day of heavy violence in Afghanistan that also saw the deaths of seven North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) soldiers in roadside bombings in the south. A government official confirmed Naqshbandi’s slaying hours after a...

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...

When Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf moved to contain the judicial crisis engulfing his regime, the country's mainstream media were among the first casualties. But no threat was directed at Pakistan's radical jihadi press, which has been just as critical of the president's decision to suspend Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry three weeks ago. Critics say the discrepancy underscores how...

Foreign militants killed the brother, father, uncle, and cousin of Urdu-language Inkishaf reporter Din Mohammed at his home in South Waziristan in apparent retribution for his work, colleagues told the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). Three other family members were also abducted. Pakistani tribesmen stand guard at a checkpoint in Wana, the main town of the South Wziristan region bordering...

Afghan interpreter and freelance journalist Ajmal Naqshbandi kidnapped by the Taliban a month ago has appealed to President Hamid Karzai to release three junior Taliban members to secure his freedom, Reuters has reported. Naqshbandi made the appeal to Karzai 10 days after an Italian journalist who was captured with him was freed following the release of five senior members of the Taliban. “You...

Free expression groups worldwide have joined Afghan journalists in demanding the release of the independent journalist and translator who was kidnapped by the Taliban at the same time as a now-freed Italian journalist. La Repubblica reporter Daniele Mastrogiacomo, his driver, Syed Agha, and his translator, Ajmal Naqshbandi, who is also a journalist, were kidnapped on March 5 by the Taliban in...

Lana Shaheen is one of the ten Palestinian woman television reporters, who was trained at the Aljazeera Centre in Qatar. Since her return, she had to adjust the principles and skills she learnt to the harsh reality of a tense conflict area. Ten Palestinian women, all professional television reporters under the age of 27, from Gaza and the West Bank, travelled to Qatar in December 2005 for an...