US troops seize award-winning Iraqi journalist

January 10th, 2006 at 13:20 Björn Hallberg

Not content with the already catastrophic toll on journalists in Iraq, and indeed a flurry of staged kidnappings, the US does a little kidnapping of its own. With uncanny timing of course.

Guardian - American troops in Baghdad yesterday blasted their way into the home of an Iraqi journalist working for the Guardian and Channel 4, firing bullets into the bedroom where he was sleeping with his wife and children.

Ali Fadhil, who two months ago won the Foreign Press Association young journalist of the year award, was hooded and taken for questioning. He was released hours later.

Dr Fadhil is working with Guardian Films on an investigation for Channel 4’s Dispatches programme into claims that tens of millions of dollars worth of Iraqi funds held by the Americans and British have been misused or misappropriated.

The troops told Dr Fadhil that they were looking for an Iraqi insurgent and seized video tapes he had shot for the programme. These have not yet been returned.

The director of the film, Callum Macrae, said yesterday: “The timing and nature of this raid is extremely disturbing. It is only a few days since we first approached the US authorities and told them Ali was doing this investigation, and asked them then to grant him an interview about our findings.

Entry 411 filed under: Middle East. This entry was posted 2 years, 12 months ago. RSS feed for comments on this post.