Missing AP Employee Found Dead In Baghdad

 

(January 5, 2007) – The Associated Press is reporting that one of their employees, Ahmed Hadi Naji, 28, who has worked for them for more than two years as a cameraman and messenger covering the war in Iraq, has been found dead, shot in the back of the head, in Baghdad six days after he went missing.

“The situation for our journalists in Iraq is unprecedented in AP’s 161-year history of covering wars and conflicts,” AP president and CEO Tom Curley said today in a statement. The courage of our Iraqi colleagues and their dedication to the story stand as an example to the world of journalism’s enduring value. All of us at AP share the pain and grief being felt by Ahmed’s family and friends.”

Naji was last seen by his family Saturday when he left them to go to work, AP says. The circumstances surrounding his death are unknown. Many bodies are discovered each morning, the victims of overnight sectarian violence. It is not known whether Naji was a random victim of that violence or whether he may have been targeted specifically because of his role with the news organization.

Naji was the fourth AP staffer to be killed in Iraq and the second AP staffer to die there in the last month. Aswan Ahmed Lutfallah, 35, an AP cameraman, was shot to death by insurgents while covering them clashing with Iraqi police on December 12.

Today AP says Naji’s body was identified in a Baghdad morgue. His wife, Sahba’a Mudhar Khalil, reported him missing when he didn’t return from work Saturday, December 30, evening. He had left her that morning on his motorcycle, saying he was going to the AP office to work, she says. AP says that Naji is survived by his wife and their four-month-old twins: a boy, Zaid, and a girl, Rand.

AP cameraman Saleh Ibrahim, the father of five children who was in his early 30s, was killed April 23, 2005, in an explosion in Mosul that also injured AP cameraman Mohammed Ibrahim. In 2004, AP driver Ismail Taher Mohsin was ambushed and killed near his Baghdad home.

AP says Naji’s death brings to 30 the number killed while on assignment for the news organization since it was founded in 1846.

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