Team Infidel
Forum Spin Doctor
Media: AFP
Byline: n/a
Date: 3 September 2006
BAGHDAD, Sept 3, 2006 (AFP) - An Iraqi freelance journalist working as a
stringer for the news agency Agence France-Presse has been abducted in the
country's war-torn capital after visiting a relative in a government-run
jail.
Bilal Abdelrahman al-Obeidi disappeared on August 14 after he visited a
detention centre near the interior ministry in central Baghdad to see his
cousin.
Obeidi's family and AFP have been in contact with his captors using his
mobile telephone, but the kidnappers have not identified themselves nor made
any demands apart from asking for recharge codes for their own telephones.
The kidnapping has been reported to the Iraqi government and the US
military, which coordinates security in Baghdad, but AFP only decided to
publicise it after failing to persuade Obeidi's captors to release him.
Obeidi -- who worked as a news reporter in the Sunni Arab city of Ramadi, a
hotbed of Iraq's violent insurgency -- is the second AFP employee to have
been kidnapped in recent months.
The news agency is still without news of office accountant Salah Jali
al-Gharrawi who was seized by gunmen on the evening of April 4 after leaving
the AFP bureau in central Baghdad.
Thousands of Iraqis have been kidnapped in recent months amid a rising tide
of sectarian violence and the bodies of murdered torture victims are found
daily in Baghdad's streets and waterways.
Byline: n/a
Date: 3 September 2006
BAGHDAD, Sept 3, 2006 (AFP) - An Iraqi freelance journalist working as a
stringer for the news agency Agence France-Presse has been abducted in the
country's war-torn capital after visiting a relative in a government-run
jail.
Bilal Abdelrahman al-Obeidi disappeared on August 14 after he visited a
detention centre near the interior ministry in central Baghdad to see his
cousin.
Obeidi's family and AFP have been in contact with his captors using his
mobile telephone, but the kidnappers have not identified themselves nor made
any demands apart from asking for recharge codes for their own telephones.
The kidnapping has been reported to the Iraqi government and the US
military, which coordinates security in Baghdad, but AFP only decided to
publicise it after failing to persuade Obeidi's captors to release him.
Obeidi -- who worked as a news reporter in the Sunni Arab city of Ramadi, a
hotbed of Iraq's violent insurgency -- is the second AFP employee to have
been kidnapped in recent months.
The news agency is still without news of office accountant Salah Jali
al-Gharrawi who was seized by gunmen on the evening of April 4 after leaving
the AFP bureau in central Baghdad.
Thousands of Iraqis have been kidnapped in recent months amid a rising tide
of sectarian violence and the bodies of murdered torture victims are found
daily in Baghdad's streets and waterways.