Assassins Target Journalists in Mosul

On Tuesday Oct. 8, unidentified gunmen went to the home of Saad Zaghloul, a journalist who was also the spokesperson for the governor of Ninawa, Sunni Muslim politician, Atheel al-Nujaifi. They shot Zaghloul in front of his home and then disappeared, despite an army checkpoint nearby.

Al-Nujaifi himself was shocked by the news – his previous spokesperson, Qahtan Sami, had been killed in a very similar way earlier this year, in July.  Sami’s corpse ad apparently lain on the street while army officers looked on.

On Wednesday there was a further attack on the administration in the region when the convoy carrying Iraqi parliamentary speaker, Osama al-Nujaifi, the brother of Ninawa’s governor was attacked. Al-Nujaifi was not hurt but two of his bodyguards died and others were injured.

Atheel Al-Nujaifi told NIQASH that all of these assassinations were being committed by one group. “It’s a group that specializes in assassinations,” he explained. Al-Nujaifi also thinks that local security forces actually know many of the names of those involved in this group but they have deliberately not taken any action on this front.

While al-Nujaifi is ostensibly the governor of Ninawa, he’s certainly not in charge of the whole of province. Kurdish military forces, the Iraqi army representing Baghdad and local security forces have split control of Ninawa in the past. As a result Mosul has been at the frontline of ethnic tensions in Iraq.

Mosul is also Iraq’s third largest city and is considered by many to be the last urban outpost of extremist Sunni Muslim groups like Al Qaeda. Because of this the city has remained under strict military control – but that security is run by the military and they take orders directly from the Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, also the commander-in-chief of Iraq’s armed forces. Al-Maliki is head of a Shiite Muslim coalition ruling the country and the al-Nujaifis are part of his most prominent opposition. So power in Mosul is split.

Al-Nujaifi did not want to name the group that specializes in assassinations and no group came forward to claim responsibility for the murder of the three journalists and the bodyguards. However the fliers distributed in the city shortly after Zaghloul’s murder were clearly the work of ISIS.

(Source: Niqash)