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| Iraq |
| Gunmen kill 4 Iraqi TV staff in Mosul |
| 2008-09-14 |
| BAGHDAD - Gunmen kidnapped and shot dead three Iraqi journalists from Iraq’s Sharqiya TV station along with their driver in the volatile northern city of Mosul on Saturday, the station and police said. It was one of the single deadliest militant attacks on journalists in Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. “Today at noon, armed people kidnapped and killed four of our workers in the channel,” Sharqiya, an independent channel based in Dubai and known for its criticism of the Iraqi government, said in a statement read by one of its presenters. It said the dead were its chief Mosul correspondent Musab Mahmoud al-Azawi, two cameramen and a driver. “The staff of this channel, whose hearts are full of mourning today, confirm our determination to go ahead with its independent work,” the statement said. The four went missing in the early hours and police said they recovered their bodies bearing gunshot wounds on the western side of Mosul. They had been filming a programme on charity during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. One of the crew later told Reuters her colleagues were snatched from outside a house where they were filming. She escaped. The head of Iraqi security operations in Mosul and surrounding Nineveh province, Major-General Riyadh Jalal Tawfiq, who has himself survived more than one assassination attempt in Mosul, said Iraqi forces were pursuing suspects. “We surrounded the area, chased the suspects and so far we’ve arrested two of them in a car,” he told Sharqiya in an interview. But he added that two others were still on the loose. |
| Posted by:Steve White |
| #6 Wasn't it just the other day the Saudi Grand Poobah said it was kosher (yeah, I know... but I don't know arabic for kosher) to kill evil TV journalists. Apparentlty he has a direct line to the baddies. |
| Posted by: Hupineck Henbane2395 2008-09-14 20:18 |
| #5 Just remember the words of Joseph Pulitzer: "Our nation and its press will rise or fall together." Without an INDEPENDENT press, things go downhill rather fast. We see that in our own nation. The majority of the Mainlysleaze Media is killing itself, while the Internet news arena is booming. I don't know what these three journalists were doing, but it must have been something good for the terrorists to kill them. |
| Posted by: Old Patriot 2008-09-14 14:31 |
| #4 The old comic "Odd Bodkins" had an interesting take on the pen and the sword. One character proclaimed that his pen was mightier than the sword, so the other asked him to set it down, and then chopped it with his sword. He chopped it in half, but one half of the pen flew up and hit him in the eye, painfully. Thus the moral: "The sword is mightier than the pen. But the pen is mighty sneaky." |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2008-09-14 12:50 |
| #3 "We've always been told that the pen is mightier than the sword. But I think that we have come to realize that is only true when the pen is protected by a mightier sword." Thus has it ever been, Betty. |
| Posted by: Barbara Skolaut 2008-09-14 10:51 |
| #2 Hopefully, this TV station will file a whopping big lawsuit against the Saudi Arabian Mufti who authorized the killing of TV station employees a week ago. That would make a very interesting trial. Especially if the families of these TV employees are Shiites, since the Mufti is Sunni. Blood feud time. |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2008-09-14 10:28 |
| #1 No matter what side the reporters were on, this is a blow to the democracy of Iraq. Free speech is a cornerstone to any democracy. However, I think we can expect more of this. As we are seeing even here in our own country, the media is no longer about reporting but has become a weapon in political arsenals. We've always been told that the pen is mightier than the sword. But I think that we have come to realize that is only true when the pen is protected by a mightier sword. |
| Posted by: Betty Grating2215 2008-09-14 03:02 |