Attack On Muslim Women Journalists: Iraqi Reporter Assassinated

KABUL, June 6: A leading female Afghan journalist was shot dead overnight, the interior ministry said on Wednesday, in the second such killing in a week — crimes that have raised alarm among media rights groups.

Zakia Zaki, owner and manager of private Peace Radio in a town 60km north of Kabul, was killed in her home on Tuesday night, the ministry said.

The attackers had not yet been identified, ministry spokesman Zemarai Bashary told AFP.

“Her family has not blamed anybody for the death of Zaki and police have started an intense investigation of the case,” he said.

Zakia Zaki, 35, was also a school headmistress and attended the 2003 meeting which drew up Afghanistan’s post-Taliban constitution.

She was critical of warlords, Afghan Independent Journalists Association president Rahimullah Samander told AFP.

London-based media watchdog Reporters Without Borders, which expressed ‘deep shock’, said she had received several death threats after openly criticising warlords and the Taliban.

The killing came amid mounting anger over the murder in Kabul on May 31 of popular 22-year-old television news presenter Shakiba Sanga Amaj, who was also shot dead in her home.

Police have arrested a suspect for the killing of Amaj but the motive is still unclear. Some reports said her murder may have been related to her refusal to marry someone.

The murder of Amaj has drawn parallels with the unsolved killing in May 2005 of 24-year-old television presenter Shaima Rezayee, also shot dead in her home.-—AFP

London-based media watchdog Reporters Without Borders, which expressed "deep shock" at the killing, said she had received several death threats after openly criticising regional commanders and the Taliban.

"Whether this savage act was linked to her work as a journalist or her civic responsibilities, it is vital that those who are responsible for this murder should be quickly identified and punished," it said in a statement.

Zaki's murder was the second of a female reporter in Afghanistan in a week.

Shakiba Sanga Amaj, a popular television new presenter, was also shot dead in her home in Kabul on May 31.
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/3A95B55E-5316-4670-B31C-C6EAD75342ED.htm

Relatives of slain Afghan journalist Zakia Zaki, 35, mourn her death at her funeral in Parwan province June 6, 2007. Zaki was shot by unidentified gunmen after she refused demands by militants to shut down her Western-funded radio station. REUTERS/Omar Sobhani (AFGHANISTAN)

New York, June 7, 2007—An Iraqi journalist who had been abducted, shot and threatened with death was slain in Mosul today by unidentified gunmen who answered her cell phone after the killing and told the caller "she went to hell."

The Committee to Protect Journalists condemned the murder of Sahar Hussein Ali al-Haydari, 44, a correspondent for the National Iraqi News Agency (NINA) and the independent news agency Aswat al-Iraq and a contributor to a number of other Iraqi media outlets. She also was a journalist trainee and correspondent for the London-based Institute for War and Peace Reporting, an organization that trains local journalists in war coverage.

"We are outraged by the murder of our colleague Sahar Hussein Ali al-Haydari and offer our condolences to her family and friends," said Joel Simon, CPJ's executive director. "The constant threats and abductions she endured, and her eventual murder, are stark reminders of the sacrifice she made to tell the Iraqi story to the world. Her death is even harder to bear because she was a personal friend and colleague."

Al-Haydari visited CPJ's offices in New York in late 2005, and CPJ helped relocate her husband and four children to Damascus, Syria, after she received death threats.

Al-Haydari was shopping in Mosul's Al-Hadbaa neighborhood when four unidentified gunmen got out of their vehicle, gunned her down and fled the scene, taking her cell phone with them, local journalists told CPJ.

Earlier, she had been reporting news of a suicide attack on a police station in the nearby town of Al-Rabiya, NINA said. When a police captain called to give her more information, the killers answered her phone, telling him, "She went to hell," according to a local journalist who spoke with the captain.

Al-Haydari had previously told CPJ that she had received many death threats. Early last year, she was twice targeted for abduction; one attempt failed, and she was rescued the other time. In March 2006, al-Haydari told CPJ she had been shot, requiring surgery. In August 2006, gunmen killed her daughter's fianc....

In her final e-mail to CPJ, on March 22, al-Haydari said her name was fourth on a death list comprised of journalists and police officers. It had been circulated throughout Mosul and posted on her house door. According to Aswat al-Iraq, the list was issued by the "Emir of the Islamic State in Mosul," the local leader of the al-Qaeda-affiliated Islamic State in Iraq.

Al-Haydari is the second employee for Aswat al-Iraq killed this year. On May 30, Nazar Abdulwahid al-Radhi, 38, was gunned down in the southern city of Al-Amarah.

At least 106 journalists, including al-Haydari, and 39 media support staffers have been killed in Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003, making Iraq the deadliest conflict for the press in CPJ's 26-year history. About four in five media deaths have been Iraqis.
http://www.cpj.org/news/2007/mideast/iraq07jun07na.html