News blackout in Najaf deplored

Reporters Without Borders today strongly condemned the Iraqi authorities for ordering journalists to leave the holy Shiite city of Najaf on the eve of a major new US military offensive against anti-regime militants there and called on the government to drop the ban at once. Police ordered all journalists out of the city on 15 August, supposedly for their own safety, and warned that those who refused to leave risked arrest. "This blackout on news from the city is completely unacceptable and is unprecedented in Iraq," said the worldwide press freedom organisation's secretary-general, Robert Ménard. "The presence of journalists in Najaf is vital since the worst atrocities are always committed in the absence of independent witnesses. Reporters must be allowed to decide for themselves whether they wish to leave for their own safety." Najaf's police chief announced on the morning of 15 August that the interior ministry had ordered all journalists, Iraqi or foreign, to leave the city within two hours. He said people were planning to attack the media. A senior police officer went to a city hotel where journalists were staying, ordered them to leave at once or face arrest and said the city was now "closed." Several then decided to leave. If all of them were to, the new attack would only be covered by journalists "embedded" with US military units. Iraqi journalist Mohammad Kazem, who works for the Iranian Arab-language TV station Al-Alam, was arrested when he made a live broadcast from a rooftop in Najaf, according to press reports from Teheran.