Move Along | The Mahablog

Via Juan Cole, we read in today’s Guardian:

American troops in Baghdad yesterday blasted their way into the home of an Iraqi journalist working for the Guardian and Channel 4, firing bullets into the bedroom where he was sleeping with his wife and children.

Ali Fadhil, who two months ago won the Foreign Press Association young journalist of the year award, was hooded and taken for questioning. He was released hours later.

Dr Fadhil is working with Guardian Films on an investigation for Channel 4’s Dispatches programme into claims that tens of millions of dollars worth of Iraqi funds held by the Americans and British have been misused or misappropriated.

The troops told Dr Fadhil that they were looking for an Iraqi insurgent and seized video tapes he had shot for the programme. These have not yet been returned.

What can one say, but … Jebus.

Update: I believe Ali Fadhil is the same Ali Fadhil who bolted from Iraq the Model awhile back to start an independent blog, Free Iraqi. [Update: This is a guess, because the blogger and the writer are both physicians, but I don’t know for certain.] Dr. Fadhil also reported from Fallujah after the November 2004 assault; see “City of Ghosts” in The Guardian, January 11, 2005.

10 thoughts on “Move Along”

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Oy. Bad stuff. More on this at War on the Press

They’re making a movie. They haven’t decided what to call it yet.

I went over to Iraq the Model to see if there was any reference there to this incident. In the comments section for the January 7 entry, someone asked if this was the same Ali. Someone else responded:

“There are at least two Ali Fadhil’s in Iraq. One is a brother of Mohammed and Omar. The other is a reporter. I remember last year there was a radio report from Ali Fadhil broadcast on NPR in the USA. I checked with Ali Fadhil, and he said, “It was not me.”

“Thus, I think it is not our Ali Fadhil. This Ali Fadhil apparently is very close with the insurgents, and perhaps his cell phone number was found in the possession of terrorists.”

FWIW. FWIW, I also roll my eyes at the “apparently … very close with the insurgents” bit.

I also googled for quite a bit, trying to find some crossover besides the name, age, and profession. Couldn’t find ITM Ali talking about living in Yemen or his daughter, nor could I find Reporter Ali talking about having brothers.

So … I dunno.

Molly: I’m not sure. We learned from “Howard Kurtz last year that the Iraq the Model Ali Fadhil is a pediatrician. The Guardian identifies the “Ali Fadhil who writes for them as an “Iraqi doctor.” That’s what made me think they were the same guy. But I cannot find confirmation.