|
The War Profiteers - War Crimes,
Kidnappings, Torture and Big Money |
|
May 22nd,
2008 - Iraqi TV Station Says U.S. Troops Killed Cameraman |
|
Iraqi TV Station Says U.S. Troops
Killed Cameraman By Aseel Kami and Khalid al-Ansary Reuters May 22, 2008 Baghdad - An Iraqi
television station accused U.S. troops on Thursday of shooting dead one of
its cameramen as he walked to his Baghdad home. The body of a second
journalist, Haidar Hashim al-Husseini, a reporter for al-Sharq newspaper, was
found dumped in a field with nine other corpses in Diyala province, police
and colleagues said. A spokeswoman for the Afaq
television channel said cameraman Wisam Ali Ouda was shot dead by U.S.
soldiers in eastern Baghdad's Obaidi district at around 5pm on Wednesday. "We confirm one of our
employees was killed by an American sniper," said Bushra Abdul-Amir,
head of public relations at the station. She added that witnesses had given
testimony to the station's managers. Hadi Jalu, deputy director
of Iraq's Journalistic Freedoms Observatory, said he had also interviewed
witnesses on the scene who had corroborated this, without saying how many.
"They all said an American soldier killed him," he said. A spokesman for the U.S.
military in Baghdad, Lieutenant-Colonel Steven Stover, said no civilians had
been killed during military operations in Obaidi on Wednesday, which starting
in the morning and continued into the night. "All extremists were
... either committing a violent act or posed a threat to commit a violent
act," he said. Colleagues of Ouda, 32, said
he was buried in the holy city of Najaf on Thursday. "Wisam was one of our
most prominent cameramen. We loudly condemn the killing of journalists,"
the station's director, Mohammed Thiab al-Baidhani, told Reuters. In a separate incident north
of Baghdad, al-Sharq reporter Husseini was kidnapped outside his home in
Diyala on Tuesday, said the newspaper's editor-in-chief, Abdul-Rasool Ziyara. Ziyara said police found his
body, along with nine others, in a field on Wednesday. His hands and feet
were bound and he had a gunshot wound to the head. There were signs of
torture. "I'm sure he was killed
because he was Shi'ite," Ziyara said. Iraq, which witnessed
significant growth in the media after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion, is the most
dangerous place in the world for journalists to work, according to a New
York-based journalism watchdog, the Committee to Protect Journalists. Iraqi journalists have been
targeted because of their work or caught up in the cross-fire of Iraq's
many-sided conflict. Early this month, gunmen
shot dead Sarwa Abdul-Wahab, a female Iraqi reporter, in Iraq's northern city
of Mosul. About 130 journalists, Iraqi
and foreign, have been killed in Iraq since 2003. Most television stations and
newspapers in Iraq are owned by political and religious sects or ethnic
groups. Militants often target journalists whom they perceive to be on the
side of their enemies in a particular conflict. Additional reporting and
writing by Tim Cocks; Editing by David Fogarty © Thomson Reuters 2008. All
rights reserved. External link: http://www.reuters.com/article/gc05/idUSGEO24738220080522 |