Ahmed Riyadh al-Karbouli

New York, April 5, 2007—The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns today’s suicide truck bomb attack on the Iraqi satellite channel Baghdad TV that killed the station’s deputy director, injured 12, and caused severe structural damage to the building in Baghdad’s Jamia district.

A suicide attacker driving a garbage truck packed with explosives blasted near the main entrance of Baghdad TV’s offices, killing Deputy Director Thaer Ahmad Jaber and injuring 12 employees, four of whom are in critical condition, according to a statement by the Iraqi Islamic Party and CPJ sources. The Journalistic Freedoms Observatory, an Iraqi press freedom organization, reported that the attackers fired at the station’s guards, clearing the way for the truck. The front of the building, which houses the Iraqi Islamic Party-owned Baghdad TV and Radio Dar al-Salam, was destroyed along with several station and employee cars, according to news reports. The station’s main transmission equipment was damaged briefly interrupting its broadcast.

New York, October 10, 2006—The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns the reported murder of an Iraqi journalist, whose body was identified in the Baghdad morgue today, a week after he had been kidnapped by unidentified gunmen.

The Journalistic Freedoms Observatory, an Iraqi press freedom organization, said the body of Azad Muhammad Hussein, 29, a reporter for the Iraqi Islamic Party-owned Radio Dar Al-Salam, showed evident signs of torture. The journalist was kidnapped from al-Shaab neighborhood in northern Baghdad on October 3. It was not immediately clear how or when Hussein’s body arrived at the morgue. CPJ is investigating to determine whether the killing was related to Hussein’s work.

New York, September 18, 2006—The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns the murder today in Iraq of Ahmed Riyadh al-Karbouli, a correspondent for Baghdad TV. Six gunmen in two Opel cars shot the reporter/cameraman as he chatted with friends after midday prayers outside a mosque in the town of Ramadi, CPJ sources said.

Al-Karbouli, 25, had received numerous death threats from insurgents over the past four months warning him to leave the satellite channel. Baghdad TV is owned by the Iraqi Islamic Party, a major Sunni political group in the country. The party joined the U.S.-backed Iraqi government earlier this year.