Posts Tagged ‘Iraq’
May 17th, 2012
The editor of a Iraqi Kurdish magazine
has been arrested for reprinting an allegedly blasphemous article. Hamin Ary, editor of Kurdish and Arabic monthly publication Chirpa (Al-Hamsah in Arabic) was arrested on 7 May after publishing an article by controversial writer Goran Halmat. Ary was arrested for “offences that violate religious sensibilities”, an offence which carries a maximum sentence of three years in prison. The article, entitled “Me and God” was originally posted on Facebook in 2010, and was deemed “offensive to Islam”.
April 4th, 2012
A TV presenter
has been killed by a car bomb in
Iraq. Kamiran Salaheddin was killed at around 9pm on Monday (2 April) night, after a bomb placed under his car exploded. Salaheddin presented Al-Iraq w-al Hadath (Iraq and Events), a news and current affairs programme on Salahaddin TV, where he had been employed since 2005. The journalist was also the head of the local journalists’ union in Tikrit. Salaheddin is the first journalist to be killed in Iraq this year.
September 12th, 2011
Well known journalist Hadia Al-Mahdi was
found dead at his home in
Baghdad on 7 September. The body of Al-Mahdi was found in his home in the Al-Karada district at around 7pm. He had been shot twice in the head. It is believed that his murder was politically motivated. Madhi hosted a popular talk show called “To whoever listens” on Radio Demozy where he tackled a wide range of subjects including the Iraqi educational system and corruption. Mahdi’s murder comes almost one month after the Iraqi parliament adopted a law on the protection of journalists on 9 August.
June 24th, 2011
Afaq.tv cameraman, Salem Alwan Al-Gharabi,
was killed in a suicide bomb attack in southern
Iraq on Tuesday. At least 27 people were killed in the
double car bomb attack outside a government compound in Diwaniya, a city 275 km south of Baghdad. Al-Gharabi had gone to cover the regional council’s weekly meeting when he was killed in the blast.
February 25th, 2011
The offices of Journalistic Freedoms Observatory (JFO), an Iraqi media watchdog, were
raided by around 30 armed men on Wednesday. The men took away computers, cameras, video cameras, bulletproof jackets and archives from the office. The director of JFO
blamed the government for the attack: “The government is behind this attack. The JFO is fighting for media freedom to become a reality in Iraq and, as such, clearly poses a threat to the authorities”.
February 25th, 2011
The first independent TV station in Northern Iraq, Naliya Radio and Television (NRT), was
forced off air after up to 50 masked gunmen
stormed its headquarters, destroying all broadcasting equipment and setting the building on fire. The TV station, which had only started broadcasting on 17 February, had already received numerous threatening messages over its coverage of protests in the city of Sulaymaniyah in which three demonstrators were
killed and another 100 wounded. NRT TV had broadcast footage of police firing on the demonstrators.
February 21st, 2011
Journalist Hilal Al-Ahmadi was
killed by unidentified gunmen outside his house in Mosul as he headed to work on 17 February. Ahmadi was a freelance journalist whose articles often drew attention to corruption and lack of social services in the local area. According to one
report more than 250 media personnel have been killed in Iraq since 2003.
January 19th, 2011
Britain’s top civil servant, Sir Gus O’Donnell, has refused permission for notes between former prime minister Tony Blair and former US president George Bush to be published by the Chilcot Inquiry into the Iraq war.
Head of the Inquiry, Sir John Chilcot, has said the notes — which he has seen — are “central to his work”. But civil servants say their publication could harm Britain’s relations with the US.
Read more here
