Atwar Bahjat
Atwar Bahjat (* 1976 in Samarra ; † February 22, 2006 ibid) was an Iraqi journalist and reporter for the TV channel Al-Arabiya , who was kidnapped and murdered while reporting on the attack on the Golden Mosque in Samarra.
Bahjat studied Arabic literature in Baghdad and graduated in 1998. She worked for several daily and weekly newspapers. After Saddam Hussein's fall , she worked for Al Jazeera and switched to Al-Arabiya a few months before she was murdered.
Atwar Bahjat's funeral procession was attacked by gunmen and was the target of a bomb attack.
On May 7, 2006 the British newspaper The Sunday Times published an article by the Arab journalist Hala Jaber , in which she describes a video recorded with a mobile phone in which a person is undressed and beheaded. Jaber believed at the time that the person seen in the video was Bahjat. This was later exposed as false by several bloggers. The video shows the murder of a Nepalese man by the Ansar al-Sunna in Iraq in August 2004. The man was one of 12 victims executed by the terrorist organization. The Sunday Times withdrew the report on May 28, 2006 because it said it was the victim of a joke.
Web links
- Pictures by Atwar Bahjat.
- Christiane Schlötzer: Last appearance of a courageous reporter. Süddeutsche Zeitung, February 24, 2006
- Hala Jaber: Death of a fighter for truth. The Sunday Times, February 26, 2006
Individual evidence
- ↑ Sunday Times Retracts Atwar Bahjat Beheading Story After Bloggers Fact Check. May 30, 2006
- ^ Hala Jaber: The Iraq execution video that fooled me. The Sunday Times, May 28, 2006
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Bahjat, Atwar |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Iraqi journalist and reporter for Al-Arabiya TV |
| DATE OF BIRTH | 1976 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Samarra , Iraq |
| DATE OF DEATH | February 22, 2006 |
| Place of death | Samarra , Iraq |