Attempted kidnapping of editor of independent daily

Reporters Without Borders called today for a thorough and speedy enquiry into the apparent attempted kidnapping in Bagdad on 29 May of Iraqi newspaper editor Ismail Zair and the killing of his driver and bodyguard. It demanded that he be given official protection. It expressed "great concern" for Zair's safety because he no longer had such protection since resigning as editor of the daily Al-Sabah, funded by the occupation forces, to found the independent daily Al-Sabah al-Jadid. It said it feared for his life after the killing of his two employees. A police vehicle and three unmarked cars showed up at Zair's house and a man dressed in police uniform told him he had a summons to deliver to him. The editor went back into the house and phoned a government minister who denied any summons had been issued. Zair remained inside the house and his driver and bodyguard were then seized and killed. He said the attackers may have been agents of the former Saddam Hussein regime or "people who did not like it that I left Al-Sabah to found a new paper," according to the French news agency, Agence France-Presse. Zair launched Al-Sabah al-Jadid on 3 May with the help of other Al-Sabah journalists who left the paper in protest against of US interference in its editorial line. Zair and his wife, Anneke van Ammelrooy, who works for the Dutch weekly paper De Groene, are Dutch citizens.