URGENT / Iraq’s media targeted by Al-Qaeda, other terror groups

BAGHDAD / IraqiNews.com: Reporters Without Borders and the Journalistic Freedoms Observatory (JFO), its partner organization in Iraq, have strongly condemned the threat of a wave of Al-Qaeda bombings against Iraq‘s news media that has just been reported by the Iraqi interior ministry. Asking not to be named, a ministry official said on 30 November that Al-Qaeda was planning a campaign of car-bombings against ministries, universities, institutes and news media including the Al-Iraqiya, Al-Furat and Al-Soumariya television stations and the daily newspaper Al-Sabah. The information is based on confessions reportedly made by a dozen Al-Qaeda members who were arrested in the Baghdad neighborhood of al-Mansour on 27 November and who were said to have acknowledged responsibility for many attacks including the hostage-taking in the Christian My Lady of Salvation Church in Baghdad on 31 October. The Interior Ministry has announced the creation of a Protection Committee headed by Interior Minister Jawad Al-Bolani that is tasked with protecting all of the potential targets. “Reporters Without Borders and JFO appeal to the leaders of Al-Qaeda and its allies in Iraq to immediately call off any plans to attack public institutions and news media and to stop targeting civilians, including journalists,” they said in a statement on Thursday. The two organizations remind Al-Qaeda of the 600-page religious “Fatwa (guidance), issued by the Pakistani Muslim scholar Mohammed Tahir-ul-Qadri in March 2010 in which he described the perpetrators and instigators of suicide bombings as the enemies of Islam. “There is no place for the martyr in Islam,” he said. “They cannot claim that their suicide bombings are martyrdom operations and that they become the heroes of the Muslim Umma [Islamic Nation],” Dr. Tahir-ul-Qadri wrote. “No, they become the heroes of hellfire (…) their acts are never, ever to be considered jihad [holy struggle].” Journalists have to cover official events at first hand, but that does not mean that they support particular politicians or public figures. They are liable to fall victim to suicide bombings which, by targeting public buildings and large gatherings, aim to take as many innocent lives as possible. Reporters Without Borders and JFO also condemned an attempt to murder the well-known TV presenter Nihed Najeeb in Kirkuk, 200 km north of Baghdad, on 27 November. Gunmen opened fire on his home at about 10 a.m. but Najeeb, who is of Turkmen origin, was not hit. Their identity and motives are still unknown but initial indications point to a link with disputes between different ethnic groups in Kirkuk. A famous radio presenter and then TV anchor during Saddam Hussein’s time, Najeeb has been based in Kirkuk since 2003. He initially worked for the Turkmen TV station Turkmen Illi but was forced to resign. He now works as the news director of the satellite TV station Al-Sharqiya, which has its headquarters in Dubai and Amman. Here is list of targeted attacks on journalists in Iraq in 2010, starting with the starting with the latest: – Mazen Mardan Al-Baghdadi, a presenter on local satellite TV station Al-Mousiliya, was gunned down in Mosul on 21 November. – Tahrir Kadhem Jawad, a cameraman employed by the U.S. Arabic-language TV station Al-Hurra, was killed by a bomb in Jasr Al-Korma, in east Fallujah, as he was about to leave for work on 4 October. The bomb had been placed underneath his car. – Alaa Mohsen, the host of the program “Liqa Sakhen (Hot Meeting)” on state-run satellite TV station Al-Iraqiya, was badly injured by a bomb placed underneath his car as he was about to leave his home in Biyaa, in the Baghdad suburb of Saydiya, to go to work in Baghdad on the morning of 27 September. – Safaa Al-Dine Abdul Hameed, the presenter of the Al-Mousiliya program “Our Mosques,” was gunned down outside his home in Mosul as he wa