Reporters Sans Frontières

Published on 23 February 2007

Reporters Without Borders today condemned a raid by US and Iraqi military units on the offices of the Union of Iraqi Journalists in the Baghdad neighbourhood of al-Waziriyah on the night of 19 February, in which shots were fired and the union’s 10 security guards were arrested.

“We strongly condemn this unjustified attack,” the press freedom organisation said. “The building’s guards were authorised to carry firearms and did not behave in an aggressive or threatening manner towards the soldiers patrolling the neighbourhood. We call for their immediate release.”

Reporters Without Borders has learned that a US army mobile unit fired on the union’s headquarters after seeing armed guards. Members of the Iraqi army then stormed into the premises, disarmed and detained the guards and seized the union’s computer equipment. It is not known where the guards are being held.

Neither the US army nor the Iraqi authorities have said anything about this attack. Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell IV, the spokesman of the coalition forces in Iraq, was unable to confirm during a news conference on 21 February whether there had been a raid by coalition troops on the union’s headquarters.

Hussein Al Zubaydi, a journalist with the weekly al-Ahali, was meanwhile killed by gunmen in unclear circumstances in Baghdad on 19 February and the bullet-riddled body of Abderrazak Hashim Al-Khakani, a journalist with radio Jumhuriyat Al Iraq, was discovered in a Baghdad morgue on 20 February. He had been kidnapped a week earlier in the east Baghdad neighbourhood of al-Jihad.