Atwar Bahjat
Encyclopedia
Atwar Bahjat was an Iraq
Iraq
Iraq ; officially the Republic of Iraq is a country in Western Asia spanning most of the northwestern end of the Zagros mountain range, the eastern part of the Syrian Desert and the northern part of the Arabian Desert....

i journalist and reporter for al-Arabiya television who was abducted and murdered while covering a story. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2089-2168496,00.html She had previously worked for al-Jazeera. http://www.countercurrents.org/iraq-welsh020306.htm In the aftermath of the 2003 Iraq War she became one of the most familiar faces on Arabic-language satellite television
Satellite television
Satellite television is television programming delivered by the means of communications satellite and received by an outdoor antenna, usually a parabolic mirror generally referred to as a satellite dish, and as far as household usage is concerned, a satellite receiver either in the form of an...

.

Background

Bahjat came from a religiously-mixed background, having a Shiite mother and a Sunni
Sunni Islam
Sunni Islam is the largest branch of Islam. Sunni Muslims are referred to in Arabic as ʾAhl ūs-Sunnah wa āl-Ǧamāʿah or ʾAhl ūs-Sunnah for short; in English, they are known as Sunni Muslims, Sunnis or Sunnites....

 father.

Bahjat was abducted and killed in Samarra
Samarra
Sāmarrā is a city in Iraq. It stands on the east bank of the Tigris in the Salah ad-Din Governorate, north of Baghdad and, in 2003, had an estimated population of 348,700....

 in the aftermath of the 22 February 2006 bomb attack that devastated the Al Askari Mosque. Her cameraman, Khaled Mahmoud Al Falahi (39) and a technician Adnan Khairallah (36) also were killed. A fourth member of the team managed to escape the ambush. Her team was surrounded by a crowd of civilians, but, according to the surviving crew member, two armed men fired shots in the air, dispersing the crowd. One of the armed men shouted, "We want the anchorwoman." Bahjat cried for help from the crowd but to no avail.

On Saturday, February 25, her funeral procession was attacked twice, first by gunmen who opened fire on mourners and later by a roadside bomb that targeted the funeral cortege as it returned from the cemetery. At least three security personnel were killed in the attacks on her funeral and four people were injured. http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/OLI540285.htm
In 2006, the Committee to Protect Journalists
Committee to Protect Journalists
The Committee to Protect Journalists is an independent nonprofit organisation based in New York City that promotes press freedom and defends the rights of journalists.-History:A group of U.S...

 posthumously awarded an International Press Freedom Award to Bahjat.

False report on murder

On May 7, 2006, The Sunday Times
The Sunday Times (UK)
The Sunday Times is a Sunday broadsheet newspaper, distributed in the United Kingdom. The Sunday Times is published by Times Newspapers Ltd, a subsidiary of News International, which is in turn owned by News Corporation. Times Newspapers also owns The Times, but the two papers were founded...

of Britain published an article written by Arab journalist Hala Jaber
Hala Jaber
Hala Jaber is a Lebanese-British journalist. She was born in West Africa and currently writes for The Sunday Times. Jaber was awarded the Amnesty International Journalist of the Year Award in 2003. She won Foreign Correspondent of the Year at the British Press Awards in 2005 and 2006 for her...

, in which she describes watching a video of Bahjat being stripped of her clothing and beheaded. The video was later proven to have nothing to do with Bahjat's murder; instead it is believed to show the murder of a Nepalese man by The Army of Ansar al-Sunna in August 2004. Report on video, MyPetJawa On May 28, 2006 The Sunday Times retracted the story, saying it was the victim of a hoax. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2089-2200173,00.html

Arrest of murder suspects

On March 18, 2006, Iraq's Defence Minister Saadun al-Dulaimi announced the arrest of six men suspected of involvement in Atwar Bahjat's murder her two-person crew from Dubai. "The six terrorists who killed the Iraqi television crew will be put on public display today or tomorrow," Dulaimi declared on March 18, but no one was put on public display to date. They were arrested in the course of Operation Swarmer
Operation Swarmer
Operation Swarmer was a joint U.S-Iraqi air assault offensive targeting insurgents in Salahuddin province, near the central city of Samarra, Iraq....

, a major operation involving both Iraqi forces and a brigade of the 101st Airborne division and north of Samarra, which was kicked off on March 16, 2006.

Suspects' possible connection with Jill Carroll kidnappers

News reporter Jill Carroll
Jill Carroll
Jill Carroll is an American former journalist who was kidnapped and ultimately released in Iraq. Carroll was a reporter for the Christian Science Monitor at the time of her kidnapping...

 overheard her kidnappers state that they were the ones who killed Ms. Bahjat. In part 8 of her story detailing her captivity, Carroll writes that one of her captors told her "We killed an Al Arabiya journalist. She said the mujahideen are bad." Carroll also wrote "It was unclear if he meant that he himself had participated in the killing or if it had been done by men from the larger group of mujahideen."http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0823/p01s01d-woiq.html

External links

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