An APTN cameraman arrested by Iraqi police

Reporters Without Borders has called on the Iraqi authorities to rapidly explain the arrest of Ibrahim Ahmed Salma, 36, cameraman with the US agency Associated Press Television News (APTN) in Baghdad on 21 May 2005. "The methods of arresting Iraqi journalists are brutal and abusive," the worldwide press freedom organisation said. Ahmed Salma's brother told Reporters Without Borders' correspondent in Iraq that police raided al-Hurriyah district in western Baghdad at around midnight on 21 May and rounded up a certain number of residents. Police also entered the family home of Ibrahim Ahmed Salma, and roughed him up before forcing him to go with them, despite his protests and presentation of his press card. An APTN spokesman told Reporters Without Borders on the phone that the agency was in contact with the authorities to try to discover the reasons for the sudden arrest. It is not yet known whether the cameraman was arrested in connection with this work. "It's not the first time that police have burst into the home of a cameraman, this time in the middle of the night, and without any explanation," said Reporters Without Borders. "A similar thing happened in recent police raids when cameramen with British news agency Reuters and German TV Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen were arrested and detained." "This latest arrest is all the more worrying since we have no information about where the journalist is being held and his family has had no news of him. We urge the Iraqi authorities to quickly explain whey he has been arrested and where he is being detained," it said. Iraqi authorities are still holding three journalists Hussein Al Shimari, reporter with satellite TV Al-Diyar, who was arrested on 9 April in Diyala Province, northeast of Baghdad, has still not been released. According to his editor, the journalist is being held by the Iraqi military forces, who suspect him of collaborating with insurgents, and has reportedly been tortured. He has not been allowed to contact his family who have had no news of him since his arrest. The mayor of Kawit, in southern Iraq on 12 April ordered the arrest of Ayad al-Tamimi, editor of the daily Sada Wasit, and the journalist Ahmed Mutare Abass. Ibrahim al-Srage, chairman of the Iraqi journalists' defence organisation, said the mayor had asked for an arrest warrant from the town's prosecutor general and had unfairly sentenced the first journalist to two months imprisonment and the second to four months for "defamation". The newspaper had carried several articles that raised the failings of the town's administration and the constant insecurity.