Danger for Iraqi Journalists

News: Their ordeals don't grab the headlines, but Iraqi reporters work in fear for their lives.

By David Enders

February 6, 2006

That reporting in Iraq is a dangerous business was underscored again last week with the abduction of a pair of journalists from the Iraqi satellite channel Sumariya.

It is unlikely the fates of Reem Zaid, 23, and her colleague Marwan Khazaal, 25, will receive as much coverage as the recent kidnapping of 28-year-old American journalist Jill Carroll. But while the kidnappings of foreigners make headlines, it is in fact Iraqi journalists and media staff who bear the brunt of the danger. The translator Carroll was working with, Allan Enwiyah, was simply shot and killed.

In some kidnapping cases, Iraqi staff working with foreigners have also been held, either by the US military or the Iraqi government, under the suspicion of being involved.

Phil Sands, a 28-year-old British freelancer was kidnapped in December along with Salam Al-Jabouri, a 22-year-old Iraqi journalist and student who frequently worked with foreign journalists and activists following the invasion of Iraq, but had ceased to because of security concerns last year. The two were accidentally rescued by US troops during a house raid in January. No one had known they had gone missing, primarily because Salam had not told his family he was working with foreigners again. This is not uncommon. Iraqis working for the western press generally lie to their neighbors and in some cases their families about what they are actually doing for work. After the pair were freed by US troops, the US military decided to hold Al-Jabouri.

The family was not contacted by the military and Sands did not know how to get in touch with them, leading them to fear the worst. Al-Jabouri's brother Saad tried to convince his mother that her son was just traveling, as he had in the past.

"I did not hear any thing from him for three weeks, and then I found one of his friends who told me that Salam was working as translator with the foreigners," Saad Al-Jabouri said. "He did not tell us that he was working as a translator because we would never allow him to do that...[W]e are worried about his safety. My mother was crying and asked me about him and every day I had to come up with new reason for his absence.

American military spokespersons in Baghdad have yet to respond to inquiries regarding Al-Jabouri's fate.

"The US army has many Iraqi journalists in their custody, the official number is eight but the number that we have is twenty three," said Moaed Al-Hamdani, an Iraqi journalist and a member of the Iraqi Association of Journalists in Baghdad. "Some are photographers and some are print journalists."

US troops in Ghazalia, a western neighborhood in Baghdad, raided the home of Ali Fadhil, a 28-year-old doctor who made "City of Ghosts," a film about Falluja for the London Guardian, on Jan. 9. The raid was apparently part of the search for Carroll.

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