New York, October 12, 2006—The Committee to Protect Journalists expressed outrage at the cold-blooded execution by masked gunmen of 11 employees of a fledgling satellite TV channel in Baghdad today.
Gunmen in at least five vehicles drove up to Al-Shaabiya television in the eastern district of Zayouna around 7 a.m., Reuters reported. They burst into the station’s offices and executed 11 people and wounded two. It was the deadliest single assault on the press in Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003.
“We condemn this barbaric attack on Al-Shaabiya and offer our condolences to the families of the victims,” CPJ Executive Director Joel Simon said. “The brazen nature of this attack demonstrates that those who seek to silence the press operate without any fear at all. Iraq’s emergent press will find it hard to survive if authorities allow these kinds of targeted attacks to continue unchecked.”
Al-Shaabiya is owned by the National Justice and Progress Party, headed by Abdul-Rahim Nasrallah al-Shimari who was killed in the attack, according to Reuters and CPJ sources. The small party ran in the last election but failed to win any seats. Al-Shaabiya had not yet gone on the air and had only run test transmissions. Executive manager Hassan Kamil told Reuters that the station had no political agenda and that the staff had been a mix of Sunnis, Shiites, and Kurds. The station had not been threatened previously. According to news reports, the channel still aims to launch after the end of the Muslim month of Ramadan in late October.
Kamil said some of the gunmen wore police uniforms, and all were masked. According to news reports the gunmen’s cars resembled police vehicles.
A local press freedom group, The Journalistic Freedoms Observatory, named the dead as chairman and general manager Abdul-Rahim Nasrallah al-Shimari and his bodyguard, Ali Jabber; deputy general manager Noufel al-Shimari; presenters Thaker al-Shouwili and Ahmad Sha’ban; administrative manager Sami Nasrallah al-Shimari; video mixer Hussein Ali; and three guards identified only by their first names: Maher, Ahmad and Hassan. The station’s generator operator, whose name was not available, was also killed. A source at Al-Shaabiya confirmed the names.
Program manager Mushtak al-Ma’mouri and news chief Muhammad Kathem were taken to the hospital with multiple gunshot wounds. They were in critical condition, according to CPJ sources.
With today’s attack, 85 journalists and 35 media support workers have been killed since March 2003, making Iraq the deadliest conflict for the press in CPJ’s 25-year history.
October 16, 2006 -- With the Iraqi bloodbath against civilians and policemen continuing, it is interesting to note the comments made by the the Iraqi Interior Minister about the parties that he claims are principally responsible for the massacres. Jawad al-Bolani, in a Friday press conference in Baghdad, rejected neo-con Bush administration claims that most of the deaths in Iraq are caused by insurgents who infiltrated the military and police. al-Bolani laid responsibility for the deaths, including gruesome beheadings of civilians, at the feet of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA)-inspired Facilities Protection Service (FPS), an unregulated force of 150,000 foreign and Iraqi private security contractors. 14,000 of the Iraqi security personnel are from the Iraqi Free Forces, a militia loyal to neocon Iraqi shill Ahmad Chalabi. The remainder are drawn from paramilitary forces with some of the worst human rights records in the world: South Africa's apartheid regime security forces; Colombian, Salvadoran, and Chilean anti-guerrilla paramilitaries; and other special forces from the United Kingdom, United States, Israel, Nepal, Fiji, and the Philippines. Beheadings, such as those seen in Iraq, are a hallmark of the Nepalese Gurkhas, some of whom are working as private contractors in Iraq.
Is neo-con darling Chalabi's private security force behind Iraqi massacres of civilians?
The chief private contractor involved in the FPS is Erinsys Ltd., which received a sole source contract from the CPA to provide security for the "oil infrastructure" in Iraq. Only in Bush's Iraq, is the oil infrastructure deserving of greater importance than the protection of human life. Erinsys is connected Chalabi through its partnership with northern Virginia-based Nour USA Ltd., incorporated in May 2003 by Aboul Huda Farouki, a Jordanian-American who has been a number of Department of Defense contracts. Darouki's seed money for his business, HAIFinance, originated in the 1980s from Petra International Banking Corporation, a Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) Jordanian affiliate, which was managed by Mohammed Chalabi, a nephew of Ahmad Chalabi. Erinsys Iraq's counsel is Salam Chalabi, another nephew of Ahmad Chalabi, and a business partner of Douglas Feith's Jerusalem-based law partner, Marc Zell (Feith & Zell [FANZ]). http://www.waynemadsenreport.com/
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