Nouri al-Maliki

Top Developments
•  Fatalities and abductions plummet as security situation improves.
•  Prime minister, others file lawsuits to harass media. Kurdish courts jail six journalists.

New York, February 4, 2010—An Iraqi government plan to impose restrictive rules on broadcast news media represents an alarming return to authoritarianism, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today. CPJ denounced the rules and called on Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and his government to abandon their repressive plan.

New York, November 11, 2009—The Committee to Protect Journalists denounces a Baghdad court’s ruling that the London-based Guardian newspaper defamed Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, left, in an April 2009 article depicting increasing authoritarianism in his government. CPJ calls on an appeals court to overturn the decision. 

New York, February 25, 2008—The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns an assassination attempt in Baghdad on Saturday against Shihab al-Tamimi, head of the Iraqi Journalists Syndicate.

Unidentified gunmen in a white Opel intercepted and opened fire on a car carrying al-Tamimi, his son and driver, Rabie, and an unidentified colleague riding in the backseat. The three were on their way from the syndicate’s headquarters to a meeting in Baghdad’s Al-Waziriya neighborhood, the journalist’s nephew, Arfan Jalil Karim, told CPJ.

New York, August 7, 2007—The Committee to Protect Journalists welcomes Monday’s decision by a criminal court in Baghdad to dismiss the charge of incitement to terror against 11 current and former employees of the independent Iraqi production company Wasan Media.

A source at Wasan Media familiar with the case told CPJ that the judge threw out the charge against all of the employees for lack of sufficient evidence. Nine of the 11 men were released from jail this morning, the source said.

For the fourth consecutive year, Iraq was the most dangerous reporting assignment in the world, exacting a frightening toll on local and foreign journalists. Thirty-two journalists and 15 media support staffers were killed during the year, bringing to 129 the number of media personnel killed in action since the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003. Those numbers easily made Iraq the deadliest conflict for the press in CPJ’s 25-year history. For the first time, murder overtook crossfire as the leading cause of journalist deaths in Iraq, with insurgent groups ruthlessly targeting journalists for political, sectarian, and Western affiliations.

New York, November 6, 2006—The Committee to Protect Journalists is concerned by the Iraq Interior Ministry’s decision on Sunday to close two Sunni-owned satellite channels indefinitely. Security forces raided Al-Zawraa TV in Baghdad and Saleheddin TV in Tikrit on grounds they were inciting violence in the hours after former leader Saddam Hussein was sentenced to death, according to news reports and CPJ sources.

The privately-owned Saleheddin TV aired live broadcasts of pro-Saddam demonstrations and then opened its phone lines for callers to express their opinions, according to CPJ sources. Police were seeking the station’s owners, Sunni businessmen Hassan Khatab and Abdelrahman Dahash for questioning, a CPJ source said.

New York, September 7, 2006—The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns the decision of the Iraqi government today to close the Baghdad bureau of the Dubai-based satellite channel Al-Arabiya for one month.

The station reported that police entered its Baghdad offices to halt operations after the cabinet chaired by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki ordered the suspension.