Abducted Iraq journalist freed after 1 week ordeal

An Iraqi journalist who was snatched from her home in Baghdad last week by armed men wearing police uniforms was freed yesterday, after a week long ordeal that raised fears that her life may be threatened.

After Afrah Al-Qaisi was abducted last week, Prime Minister Haider Al-Abadi called for an investigation into her disappearance and demanded that she be released following Iraqi social media activists’ explosion of outrage.

Al-Qaisi is known for her outspoken criticism of the government and its institutions, writing satirical and scathing columns for several local and international outlets. She was employed by the Saudi Arabia-owned and London-based Asharq Al-Awsat.

Just before she was taken, Al-Qaisi, 43, wrote an article criticising how armed Shia militant groups could act “with impunity” with the government’s full knowledge. She was attacked not long after.

At the time that she was taken, her husband was away from the family home and the armed militants, likely Shia militias masquerading as Iraqi security services, broke in after she refused to open the door.

“They separated [Afrah’s] children from their mother after forcefully entering the house and took money, jewellery, laptops and her car as they left,” the head of the Iraqi Journalistic Freedoms Observatory, Ziyad Al-Ajili, said last week.

Silencing journalism with violence

Iraq is ranked second after Somalia in the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) 2016 Index of Impunity, which calculates the number of unsolved murders of journalists over a 10-year period as a percentage of each country’s population.

Over the past decade, 71 journalists have been killed with impunity in Iraq, according to the CPJ.

Even earlier than this, foreign journalists critical of the political process and Shia militias have been targeted. In 2005, Steven Vincent was killed by suspected Mahdi Army Shia jihadists after publishing a report for The New York Times on the militants.

More recently, in April 2015, Reuters’ Baghdad bureau chief, Ned Parker, was forced to flee the country after writing a report that detailed the Iraqi Security Forces’ (ISF) culpability in looting sprees around the city of Tikrit, and of lynching people in extrajudicial murders and executions.

The situation for Iraqi journalists is even more fraught with danger, as they are usually granted less international attention than their Western counterparts if they are abducted.

Iraqi journalists critical of the Baghdad government are frequently targeted, particularly as criticism of the ISF is seen as criticism of the Shia militias as many of their men have integrated into the formal Iraqi military and police structures.

Armed Shia militias, many backed by the government and integrated into the Iranian-sponsored Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF) paramilitary organisation, have grown increasingly powerful through their participation in Baghdad’s fight against Daesh.