embedded in the floating world
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nmazca.blog embedded in the floating world |
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"On [Mar 29], a US military official said an investigation into the deaths [of two Al-Arabiya reporters] showed troops were responsible, but they had acted 'within the rules of engagement.' US soldiers were aiming at a different car, a white Volvo that had driven through the checkpoint at high speed, the investigation said. Al-Arabiya's grey Kia car was 50 to 150 metres down the road, trying to turn when it was accidentally hit, the military said. Al-Arabiya cameraman Ali Abd al-Aziz died on 18 March from a gunshot wound to the head. Correspondent Ali al-Khatib died from his wounds in hospital the next day. Both were Iraqis." from Alternet "While he was interviewing people at the scene, U.S. troops who had previously taken photographs of [Salah] Hassan at other events arrested him, took him to a police station, interrogated him and repeatedly accused the cameraman of knowing in advance about the bomb attack and of lying in wait to get footage. "I told them to review my tapes, that it was clear I had arrived thirty or forty minutes after the blast. They told me I was a liar," says Hassan. From Baquba, Hassan says he was taken to the military base at Baghdad International Airport, held in a bathroom for two days, then flown hooded and bound to Tikrit. After two more days in another bathroom, he was loaded onto a five-truck convoy of detainees and shipped south to Abu Ghraib, a Saddam-built prison that now serves as the American military's main detention center and holds about 13,000 captives. Once inside the sprawling prison, Hassan says, he was greeted by U.S. soldiers who sang "Happy Birthday" to him through his tight plastic hood, stripped him naked and addressed him only as "Al Jazeera," "boy" or "bitch." He was forced to stand hooded, bound and naked for eleven hours in the bitter autumn night air; when he fell, soldiers kicked his legs to get him up again. In the morning, Hassan says, he was made to wear a dirty red jumpsuit that was covered with someone else's fresh vomit, and interrogated by two Americans in civilian clothes. They made the usual accusations that Hassan and Al Jazeera were in cahoots with "terrorists." While most Abu Ghraib prisoners are held in large barracks-like tents in open-air compounds surrounded by razor wire, Hassan says he was locked in a high-security isolation unit of tiny cells. Down the tier from him was an old woman who sobbed incessantly and a mentally deranged 13-year-old girl who would scream and shriek until the American guards released her into the hall, where she would run up and down; exhausted, she would eventually return to her cell voluntarily. Hassan says that all other prisoners in the unit, mostly men, were ordered to remain silent or risk being punished with denial of food, water and light." from Reporters Without Borders Reporters Without Borders has called on the US Army to open an immediate investigation into the death of Iraqi cameraman Bourhan Mohammad al-Louhaybi, who was shot in the head while working for the American ABC television network. The cameraman was killed while covering clashes between US forces and groups of armed Iraqis in Falluja, 50 kilometres west of Baghdad on 26 March. ABC News confirmed the death of al-Louhaybi, 34, on its website. The cameraman had reportedly wanted to go on filming the clashes against the advice of some of his colleagues. Four other Iraqis were killed during the combat... Elsewhere, the US weekly Time Magazine has confirmed the death of one of its Iraqi interpreters, Omar Hashim Kamal, who died in Baghdad on 26 March after being shot in circumstances that are still unclear." Eight of 16 media professionals killed this (short) year lost their lives in Iraq. Most if not all were Iraqis who were documenting their country's U.S.-managed freedom/occupation. Will it be a surprise if resistance and anger toward Westerners increases, not just in Iraq, but in some of the places where the work of these reporters was distributed? Iraqi journalists killed and threatened |
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