Atwar Bahjat

Atwar Bahjat (Arabic: أطوار بهجت‎‎; 7 June 1976 – 22 February 2006) was an Iraqi journalist. Initially a reporter for Iraq's state-controlled television under Saddam Hussein, Bahjat became a reporter for al-Jazeera and later a popular television correspondent for al-Arabiya following the US invasion of Iraq. On 22 February 2006, Bahjat was abducted, raped, and murdered while covering a story in Samarra.

Life and career

Bahjat was born in Samarra. Her mother was a Shia and her father a Sunni.^[2] Bahjat began her career reporting propaganda for Iraqi television during the rule of Saddam Hussein.^[3][4]

Following the US invasion of Iraq, she began work at al-Jazeera. Initially assigned to culture stories, she persisted in her reporting and was eventually assigned to political coverage of the Governing Council.^[2] She was the first to report from the scene about the 2003 looting of the National Museum of Iraq.^[4] On another occasion, she was detained overnight by the US military. She later persuaded her editors to send her to cover the 2004 fighting in Najaf, broadcasting live shots from rooftops even after the killing of another reporter by a US army sniper.^[2]

She later became a television reporter for al-Arabiya. Prior to her death, she was one of the best-known television journalists in the country.^[2]

Murder

On 22 February 2006, the Shia Al Askari Mosque in Samarra was hit by a bomb attack, which triggered waves of retaliatory violence between Sunnis and Shias. Bahjat persuaded her editors to let her travel to the scene.^[2]

Bahjat and a three-man crew were broadcasting outside of Samarra, surrounded by a crowd of civilians, when three Sunni brothers—Yasser, Abdallah and Mohsen al-Takhi—arrived in a pickup truck and fired shots in the air, chasing away the crowd.^[5][6][7] One of the attackers shouted, "We want the correspondent." Bahjat, her cameraman Khaled Mahmoud, and her technician Adnan Khairallah, were abducted. A fourth member of the team managed to escape.^[5] The three were driven to a side street, where Mohsen and Abdallah shot Mahmoud and Khairallah; Yasser raped and shot Bahjat.^[6] The bodies were found later that day.^[5]

On Saturday, 25 February, her funeral procession was attacked twice, first by gunmen who opened fire on mourners and later by a roadside bomb that targeted the funeral cortege as it returned from the cemetery. At least three security personnel were killed in the attacks on her funeral and four people were injured.^[8]

Investigation

On 7 May 2006, the UK Sunday Times published an article by Hala Jaber, in which she describes watching a video of Bahjat being stripped of her clothing and beheaded. The video was later proven to show the murder of a Nepalese man by The Army of Ansar al-Sunna in August 2004.^[9] On 28 May 2006 The Sunday Times retracted the story, saying it had been the victim of a hoax.^[10]

In 2009, Yasser al-Takhi was captured along with his brothers and confessed to Bahjat's rape and murder; his confession was later televised.^[6] He was sentenced to death by hanging in a trial criticized by Amnesty International as falling short of international standards, and was hanged on 16 November 2011.^[11]

Posthumous recognition

In 2006, the Committee to Protect Journalists posthumously awarded an International Press Freedom Award to Bahjat.^[12] Bahjat was also recognized posthumously by the Nieman Foundation for Journalism of Harvard University, which awarded her its Louis Lyons Award.^[13]

Megan K. Stack's Every Man in This Village Is a Liar: An Education in War, a finalist for the 2010 National Book Award for Nonfiction, has a section devoted to Bahjat.^[14]

References