A timeline of the violations against Iraqi journalists during the first three months of 2007, as it appears on the IJRDA website: - January 7, 2007: an unknown armed group in Dora, south of Baghdad, seizes Ahmed Hadi, and his corpse is found later tortured and mutilated. - January 10: Karim Sabri Al-Rubai’i is abducted from his home in Washash, west of Baghdad. His fate is still unclear. - January 12: Khudhur Khalaf Al-Ubaidi, editor in chief of the weekly Diwan newspaper is assassinated by unknown gunmen. - January 15: Falah Khalaf Hammad, a reporter working for Al-Sahha newspaper in the Anbar governorate, is killed by unknown gunmen. - January 17: Salih Mehdi, who works for the Mustaqbal radio station, is assassinated in Dora. - January 17: British troops detain Mohammed Al-Fartousi, a photojournalist for the Al-Alam satellite channel while he is covering an explosion in Basrah. - January 20: Mohammed Nuri and Bahaa’ Hussein Khalaf, both reporters for the Iraqi Media Network, are assassinated in the Ninewa governorate. - January 24: Dhiaa’ Mugotar, editor in chief of the Protection of Consumers business magazine, is assassinated in Adhamiya. - January 26: An extremist group in the Diyala governorate sentences reporter Ali Al-Hijjiya to death and distributes posters of the execution order on the streets. - January 29: Al-Diyar sattelite channel reporter Uday Al-Mukhtar is attacked and severely wounded by unknown gunmen. - February 1: Lamia’ Al-Khalidi, a reporter for the Diyar satellite channel, is harassed and detained by Iraqi police while she is covering Shi’ite pilgrimage rituals in Samawa. - February 2: Samir Abid Mahdi is killed in a car bombing in the Babel governorate. - February 4: U.S. troops kills Suhad Al-Kinani, a reporter for the Iraqi Media Network, when their patrol passes by her car in Allawi Al-Hilla in Baghdad. - February 19: Pesh Merga militants detain Al-Hurra satellite channel reporter Munir As’ad in the Sheikhan area, north of Mosul. - February 20: Abdul Razzaq Hashim is assassinated in the Jihad district of Baghdad. - February 20: U.S. troops shoot and wound Furat Jamal Hussein during a raid against his residence in the Tunis district of Baghdad. - February 20: U.S. troops raid the Iraqi Journalists Union in Waziriya, Baghdad, and detain several guards. The building is trashed and an armed group later steals all possessions in the building. - February 21: Rasoul Abdul Hussein and his wife are assassinated in Diwaniya, south of Iraq. - February 22: U.S. troops detain Mohammed Adnan Al-Ka’bi, a reporter for Al-Ahd radio, during a raid against his residence in the Ur district of Baghdad. - February 22: U.S. troops raid the Al-Da’wa newspaper headquarters in Baghdad. - February 25: Iraqi security forces raid the headquarters of the Al-Wasan Media Company in Baghdad and detain 12 media workers, including journalist Shakir Al-Falahi. - February 28: Jamal Nasir Al-Zubaidi, a reporter for the Al-Safeer newspaper, is abducted while leaving work and his corpse was discovered the same day in the Amil district. - March 3: Falah Hashim is abducted by gunmen in Iraqi Army uniforms in Kirkuk. He is still missing. - March 4: Mohan Al-Dhaher, editor in chief of the Al-Mashriq newspaper, is assassinated in the Jami’a district, while waiting for a taxi to take him to work. - March 8: Iraqi security forces detain Al-Hurriya channel reporter Hussein Yassin and cameraman Adnan Hussein near the Green Zone in Baghdad. The reporter was released on the same day, but the cameraman remains in detention. - March 14: Yousif Sabri, a reporter for the Beladi satellite channel, is killed in a car bombing near Dora, south of Baghdad, as he was covering Shi’ite pilgrimage rituals. - March 15: Armed bodyguards of Ahmed Chalabi, head of the Iraqi National Congress, assault a group of reporters for Al-Hurra satellite channel while they are covering his press conference. - March 16: Hussein Al-Jubouri, editor in chief of the Al-Safeer newspaper, dies from his wounds in the hospital after he was attacked by unknown gunmen a month earlier. The Al-Safeer newspaper, an independent daily funded by advertisements, had received threats and had to relocate its headquarters to another area of Baghdad. - March 17: Karim Himayim, a reporter for Radio Dijlah, and his driver are abducted in the Jami’a district. - March 19: Hamid Mohammed Salih, a program director for the Dijlah radio station, is assassinated in the Jami’a district. - March 31: Mohammed Jassim Yousif, a reporter for the Iraqi Media Network, is assassinated west of Baghdad.
Residents of Baghdad report less Iraqi security checkpoints on the streets and lax measures at permanent ones over the last few days, compared to the first few days of the Imposing Law security operation. This noticeable phenomenon explains the return of assassinations, sectarian violence and deportation in several areas of the capital. The Sunni-majority Adhamiya district, an insurgent stronghold that was one of the first areas subjected to meticulous security sweeps by joint U.S.-Iraqi over the last few weeks, has now fallen under the control of Al-Qaeda in Iraq elements, locals said. Gunmen ordered residents to take down their satellite dishes, to observe strict Islamic rules and not to send their children to schools and colleges. Shi’ite residents, governmental employees, local councilmen and members of rival “secular” insurgent groups are systematically targeted for assassination.
An average of four to five corpses are discovered on the streets, according to terrified inhabitants who said they feel besieged in their homes because they fear abduction by Shi’ite death squads if they left Adhamiya. Now they also have to endure Al-Qaeda’s reign of terror. Um Rana, 35, an employee at a non-governmental agency, expressed despair but also defiance when a longtime neighbor advised her not to leave home without a veil and a modest dress. “I’m not going to be forced to wear a veil,” she snapped. “What kind of life is this? Let them kill me if they want and maybe then I would be relieved of it. I don’t care anymore.”
The Sadrist Movement and the Islamic Fadhila Party co-signed an agreement brokered by a committee of several Shi’ite political parties to end hostilities in Basrah. Violent clashes had erupted between Mahdi Army gunmen aided by local police forces on one hand and Fadhila Party members following the arrest of a prominent Sadrist and an attempt by Sadrists to take over an electricity department in Basrah ten days ago. The statement signed by the two parties condemned the attack against the Fadhila Party headquarters and the electricity department and it contained a pledge to uphold the rule of law and to solve future disputes through negotiations without resorting to arms.
Colonel Abdul Karim Khalaf, a spokesman for the Iraqi Interior Ministry, disputed the numbers of Iraqi casualties for March, as compiled by news agencies and published on several Internet websites (a rise of 15% from the previous month), in a press statement Monday. Khalaf said the statistics were not released by the ministry or any other Iraqi officials, and that the reported deaths included non-violent deaths. He also threatened to prosecute Internet websites for “harming Iraqi national security by publishing inaccurate information.”
