Friday, March 19, 2004

Two more newsmen are killed and Iraqi journos walk out on Powell's conference

Iraqi journalists walked out of a Baghdad news conference given by Secretary of State Colin Powell on Friday in protest at lack of security and the killing of two Iraqi journalists by U.S. troops.

"We declare our boycott of the conference because of the martyrs," Najim al-Rubaie of Iraq's Distor newspaper said in a statement read at the start of the news conference as Powell and Iraq's U.S. governor Paul Bremer looked on.

"We declare our condemnation of the incident which led to the killing of the two journalists...who were killed at the hands of the American forces."

More than 30 Iraqi journalists then stood up and walked out.
  Reuters article

A list of killed journos is here. (Scroll down to Part III)

Employees of Dubai-based satellite television channel Al Arabiya say U.S. soldiers opened fire on a car carrying an Arabiya crew on Thursday evening after another car ran through a checkpoint. Cameraman Ali Abdelaziz was killed and correspondent Ali al-Khatib died in hospital on Friday morning.

After the walkout, Powell said he respected the right of the journalists to express their feelings.

"It is something that would never have happened at an earlier time in the history of Iraq, certainly not in the last 30 years," he said.

Powell said he regretted the loss of life of the journalists, and all loss of life in Iraq.

"But let's be clear who is responsible for this," he said. "Those individuals left over from the old regime do not want to see the Iraqi people live in peace. They do not want to see democracy take root."

Powell said he did not have the full details of the Arabiya incident but he was certain that troops would not have deliberately killed journalists. He said that sometimes in the confusion after a guerrilla attack, "mistakes happen, tragedies occur."


January 30: Clamping down on journalists
January 10: Remember the Journalists
January 9: Above the law
January 3: Journalists not welcome

"We walked out because we need them to ensure that we are safe under the occupation and yet they have done nothing," Ahmed al-Samraee, an Iraqi producer with the Qatar-based Al Jazeera satellite channel, said after the walkout.

"I saw these people killed. They were shot dead on purpose," he said.

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