Iraqi sound engineer killed in car-bomb attack

New York, April 21 2011–The Committee to Protect Journalists mourns the death of an Iraqi sound engineer who sustained fatal injuries in a double car-bomb attack Monday in Baghdad.

In a statement released Monday, the privately owned satellite news channel Baghdad TV said that one of its sound engineers, Abdul Rahman al-Kubaisi, had been killed on his way to work near a security checkpoint at a crowded entrance to Baghdad’s Green Zone.  Al-Kubaisi was in his car waiting to enter the fortified zone when the bombs exploded, Baghdad TV said.  The New York Times reported that at least six people were killed and 20 were wounded in the attack.

“We are saddened by the untimely death of Abdul Rahman al-Kubaisi,” said Mohamed Abdel Dayem, CPJ’s Middle East and North Africa program coordinator. “This is a reminder of how dangerous Iraq remains for journalists and media professionals.”

In an unrelated case, security forces in Yemen’s capital Sana’a seized and burned a shipment of 3,000 copies of the independent weekly Hadith al-Madina on Saturday, local news reports said. Two distributors of the weekly along with the driver of the shipment were detained for several hours, according to the same news accounts.

The confiscation followed an article by the weekly’s editor-in-chief, Fikri Qassem, denouncing President Abdullah Ali Saleh’s comment that women should not take part in protest rallies, local journalists told CPJ.

Copies of at least three other publications were confiscated Friday, CPJ research shows.