Assassins Target Journalists in Mosul

Journalists like Karim and Ghanem have also been targeted, al-Sanjari said. And not just while they’ve been working but also in their own homes: al-Sanjari was referring to the murder of a presenter for local TV station, Sama Al Mosul, who was gunned down at home in front of his wife and child.

Most recently locals say they’ve seen fliers in their neighbourhoods which threaten journalists and media workers with death if they continue their jobs. Anyone reporting to work risked death, the fliers said.

An estimated 47 journalists and media professionals have been killed in Mosul since 2003. News agency Reuters says that “according to the Baghdad-based Journalism Freedoms Observatory, 261 journalists have been killed and 46 kidnapped since 2003, the year of the US-led invasion of Iraq”.

So it seems clear that Mosul is still one of the most dangerous cities in the world for media workers. The city remains one of Iraq’s most dangerous because of its mixture of ethnicities and sectarian allegiances and as such it has become a battleground for local security forces and groups affiliated with Sunni Muslim extremists, the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, which has connections with Al Qaeda. The Al Qaeda-affiliated militias have been based in Mosul for several years now and are also well known to extort “protection money” from locals to fund their operations.

Muhannad Khaled Hussein, a young journalist working for a public channel in Mosul said he and other staff stayed in their offices and didn’t want to leave after hearing about the threatening fliers in the city. “A lot of journalists have moved house for security reasons and those who haven’t already quit their jobs are trying to leave the city,” he said.

One veteran journalist says he never uses his real name on any articles, he has disabled his Facebook account, changed his phone number and that he’s planning to leave his house for a few weeks, until things settle down – if they ever do.

Radio reporter Talal Majid says that while he stayed on at work, many other employees quit their jobs after hearing about the fliers. “They took them seriously,” Majid says “especially because the fliers were distributed just a few hours after the assassination of Saad Zaghloul.”