Reuters demands release of wounded Iraq journalist

By Alastair Macdonald

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Reuters demanded the immediate release
on Monday of an Iraqi cameraman who was still being held by
U.S. forces more than 24 hours after being wounded in an
incident in which his soundman was killed.

Iraqi police said the news team was shot by U.S. soldiers.

The U.S. military said it was still investigating and
refused to say what questions it was putting to cameraman
Haider Kadhem. It would not say where in Baghdad he was held
nor identify the unit holding him.

“Reuters demands the immediate release of Haider Kadhem,”
Global Managing Editor David Schlesinger said.

“We fail to understand what reason there can be for his
continued detention more than a day after he was the innocent
victim of an incident in which his colleague was killed.”

Lieutenant Colonel Robert Whetstone, a military spokesman,
said: “He is being questioned by our investigating officer.”

He said there were “inconsistencies” in Kadhem’s statements
and officers were looking into “events that led up to the
incident.” No military investigator, however, had contacted
Reuters, whose senior staff offered a full account of the
assignment on which they dispatched the journalists shortly
before they were shot.

Soundman Waleed Khaled was buried on Monday after he was
hit several times in the head and chest while driving his car,
an ordinary passenger vehicle, on the assignment in western
Baghdad. Kadhem was wounded in the back. Whetstone said the
wound was “superficial” and he had been treated “on location.”

Kadhem, a 24-year-old cameraman based in the southern city
of Samawa, had been in Baghdad only since Friday to train and
to reinforce the Reuters news crews in the capital.

He was dispatched to the Hay al-Adil district, where he was
shot, after a police source called Reuters to report an
incident involving police and gunmen in that area.

FUNERAL

Waleed Khaled, 35, was a veteran of reporting the conflict
on the streets of Baghdad and had been a popular and jovial
presence in the Reuters bureau for two years.

Distraught family, colleagues and friends, numbering some
200, attended his funeral in the west of the city.

The official Iraqi police report said U.S. troops opened
fire on the Reuters journalists.

Kadhem told colleagues who were briefly detained with him
at the scene: “I heard shooting, looked up and saw an American
sniper on the roof of the shopping center.”

A U.S. statement said: “Task Force Baghdad units responded
to a terrorist attack on an Iraqi Police convoy … which
killed and wounded several Iraqi Police. One civilian was
killed and another was wounded by small-arms fire during the
attack.”

Reporters Without Borders, a Paris-based media rights
group, called the shooting “extremely disturbing” and said the
Reuters soundman was the 66th journalist or media assistant
killed in Iraq since the invasion of 2003, three more than died
in 20 years in Vietnam.

“Our outrage is compounded by the fact that they arrested
Kadhem, the only eyewitness, who was himself injured,” it said.

Two Reuters cameramen have been killed by U.S. troops in
Iraq since the U.S. invasion in 2003. A third was shot dead by
a sniper in Ramadi last November in circumstances for which
Reuters is still seeking an explanation from U.S. forces.

Reuters’ cameraman in the city of Ramadi, Ali
al-Mashhadani, was arrested by U.S. forces three weeks ago and
is being held without charge in Abu Ghraib prison. U.S.
military officials have said he will face a judicial hearing
shortly but have still given no access to the journalist or
said what he is accused of.

A military spokesman said the hearing was “probably” taking
place on Monday at a secret location in Baghdad. No access was
available for an attorney or any other interested party.