Ali, a reporter for the weekly Talafar al-Yawm, was murdered by unidentified gunmen in Mosul’s Wadi Aqab area late at night. The killers took the journalist’s cell phone and the money he was carrying to pay the paper’s printers, Editor-in-Chief Tareq Muhammad Ali told CPJ.
Ali gathered news from official sources, including the police and security forces, and enjoyed good relations with them, his editor said. Insurgents target journalists dealing with official sources, especially the police, he added. Ali, who is also the victim’s brother, spoke with the killers via the stolen cell phone. They said they had killed him because he was an infidel and journalist. Ali described Talafar al-Yawm as pro-Iraqi government and pro-democracy, adding that the paper’s reports had not refered to U.S. forces as occupiers. As a result, he said, the paper had received multiple threats from insurgents.