Hopefully they haven't yet been shot like some of the other journalists.The US-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is demanding an explanation from U.S. and Iraqi military forces regarding the whereabouts of least eight Iraqi journalists who have been detained since March 2005.
CPJ called on U.S. and Iraqi officials to publicly explain the basis for the journalists' continued detention.[...]
All eight of the journalists work for Western news organisations and though none of the journalists have been formally charged Boylan gave no indication that they would be.
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According to CPJ, U.S. military spokesman Lt. Col. Steve Boylan said that the journalists pose a "security risk to the Iraqi people and coalition forces."
No further details were given.
Update 8:30am:
Stan Goff posted a Bill Van Auken article on this issue early this month:
Read the rest of the article for more details and simliar incidents.At least nine Iraqi journalists who worked for major Western news organizations have disappeared into the network of concentration camps in which the US military is holding an estimated 17,000 citizens of the occupied country, the French news agency AFP reported May 5.
An even larger number of Iraqi reporters and other Arab journalists who do not have connections to the international media have also been thrown into prison.
The ruthless and often lethal suppression of the press has been a persistent feature of the war that Bush administration hails as a crusade for democracy and freedom in Iraq.[...]
Among the latest arrests is that of AFP’s photographer Fares Nawaf al-Issaywi, who was seized by Iraqi police while taking pictures in the shattered city of Fallujah and then turned over to American forces. The US occupation authority has taken extreme measures to prevent any independent reporting of the massive damage to the Iraqi city for fear of the impact on public opinion both in the Arab world and in the US itself.
According to Reuters, Issaywi was to have received a “photo of the year” award at an international press ceremony in China on May 28. “US forces have so far been unable to confirm they are holding him,” the news agency reported.
The news agency also highlighted the case of Abdul Ameer Hussein, a cameraman working for the American network, CBS News. He was shot and wounded by American troops while covering the aftermath of a bombing in Mosul last month. Arrested by US troops as he left the hospital, he was charged with being a “danger to coalition forces” and thrown into Abu Ghraib as well.
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Also arrested in Mosul by the US-organized Iraqi security forces on April 25 were a Reuters television cameraman, Nabil Hussein, his driver and another journalist. Hussein’s father was also arrested when he went to inquire about his son’s fate. Though the other journalist and the driver were released the same day, Hussein and his father were held for 11 days without charges.
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Meanwhile, in March, the Pentagon announced that it would not accede to Reuters’s demands for reopening an investigation into the detention, torture and sexual abuse of three of its employees in Fallujah in January 2004.
Among the other imprisoned reporters is another Reuters employee, Ammar Daham Naef Khalaf, who was dragged from his home in Ramadi by US soldiers on April 11. He has apparently since been transferred to Abu Ghraib prison, where occupation forces hold people for up to 60 days incommunicado.
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US repression—both detentions and shootings—combined with the ever-present threat of being kidnapped or killed by elements of the Iraqi resistance or criminal gangs has had the effect of reducing independent reporting to a minimum.
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