Iraqis seize newsmen at gunpoint
By Michelle Gilchrist
April 3, 2003
THE only two Australian journalists operating independently inside Iraq have been seized at gunpoint by secret police and driven eight hours through a battle zone to Baghdad, where they are under house arrest.
Iraqi officials in the capital told The Australian's Europe correspondent Peter Wilson and photographer John Feder that they faced seven years' jail for "infiltrating" the country.
The pair, and their British-Lebanese interpreter, Stewart Innes, were arrested in Basra on Tuesday afternoon after entering the besieged city to interview Iraqi civilians.
They were confronted by secret police and were bundled into a car before being interrogated at a Basra hotel and "guarded by a couple of guys with AK-47s".
The team were then taken on a hazardous drive north-west to the capital, encountering battles north of Basra. At one point "a tank about 300 yards in front of us got blown up", Wilson told The Australian's editor Michael Stutchbury yesterday. (Audio)
They are now being held at the Meridien Palestine hotel in central Baghdad, where other foreign journalists are staying under tight controls. Iraqi officials told Wilson and Feder they had not decided what to do with them and might expel them.
Wilson said they were subjected to "lots of haranguing and lectures" in Baghdad.
"(Iraqi officials asked) why are you killing us? Why are you bombing us? And we were saying we are not killing you, we don't represent these countries."
Last week, Wilson, Feder and Innes were the first Australian news crew to reach the outskirts of Basra, Iraq's second-biggest city. ( John Feder's pictures)
As two of the few journalists not "embedded" with coalition forces, they were able to report first-hand on the humanitarian crisis in Basra.
Wilson and Feder have fought to remain independent from the control of the US and British military since entering Iraq from Kuwait last Wednesday. They entered Iraq, undetected by either the coalition or Iraqi forces, by tailing a US military convoy in a four-wheel drive vehicle.
"We wore body armour and military-style helmets and the Kuwaiti and British troops at the border seemed to think our four-wheel drive was part of the convoy," Wilson wrote last week.
"The US-led coalition has insisted that the border is open to the press but has gone out of its way to stop independently travelling journalists from getting into a region which was supposed to be 'under control' a week ago, but is actually anything but controlled."
Their detention comes just a day after correspondent Ian McPhedran, who was filing reports from Baghdad since well before the war started, is now in Amman, the Jordanian capital.
He was expelled from Iraq after being accused of breaching the guidelines for foreign correspondents in the besieged city of Baghdad.
McPhedran was given 24 hours to leave the capital after he attempted to inspect the damage inflicted by coalition forces on Baghdad's Ministry of Information building on Sunday morning.
Iraqi officials accused McPhedran of travelling around the city without a minder supplied by the Ministry of Information. Minders are used to control and supervise the activities of journalists.
The Australian
War toll: journalists killed or missing in Iraq
Annie Lawson, Guardian Unlimited
Thursday April 3, 2003
Australian journalist Peter Wilson and photographer John Feder remained under house arrest last night after Iraqi authorities detained the news team on Tuesday, the Australian newspaper reported today.
Wilson, the newspaper's London correspondent, Canberra-based Feder and translator Stewart Innes all face expulsion from Iraq after they were snatched soon after entering the besieged city of Basra to interview civilians.
The roving news team did not have the protection of journalists who are embedded with the UK and US military, and instead tried to remain independent.
They were taken on an eight-hour journey through the battlefields to Baghdad where they were placed under arrest and kept at the Palestine Meridien hotel.
Iraqi police have ordered the team not to file stories or photographs and their position is being considered over the next day. Nearby rooms, which are all being guarded, are filled with other detained journalists, including seven Italian reporters and three French journalists.
"They have been told their situation may be clarified in the next 24 hours - whether they will be expelled or allowed to stay in the country," Bruce Loudon, the managing director of group news at News Corporation's Australian arm, told Reuters.
"They are in the Palestine Hotel where they are free to move around but they cannot leave and they cannot work."
The incident follows the expulsion of Australian journalist Ian McPhedran, also a News Ltd employee, from Iraq this week for leaving his hotel without an Iraqi minder.
By Peter Wilson in Baghdad
April 10, 2003
US troops are still battling on the streets to extend their control of Baghdad, but in the Palestine Meridien Hotel the regime of Saddam Hussein has lost its grip.
The Iraqi Information Ministry's "minders" who had hectored and controlled foreign journalists, and the more greatly feared secret police heavies, have disappeared.
The fighting is not over yet, and the death count of at least 1200 civilians in Baghdad and twice that number of Iraqi soldiers will rise before the regime collapses, but the spectacular US occupation of the presidential complex on the banks of the Tigris River and subsequent US expansion into other parts of the city have set many of Saddam Hussein's mid-level functionaries running.
Before disappearing altogether, minders still at the hotel had changed demeanor, with yesterday's bullies becoming oddly reasonable. A new air of freedom spread through what was essentially the foreign press compound across the river from the presidential compound.
Foreign journalists cooped up here and in the neighbouring Sheraton Hotel have had the experience of being threatened with expulsion or worse if they stepped out of line or pointed their cameras in the wrong direction.
Photographer John Feder, Arabic interpreter Stewart Innes and I had been kept on a tight leash since being brought to the Palestine Meridien last week after being arrested while reporting in Basra.
Our cameras, computers and satellite phones were confiscated and we were forbidden from reporting or leaving the hotel.
To send photographs and reports like this, we had to work surreptitiously on equipment borrowed from European reporters and smuggled to our room in boxes of fruit.
But as I was doing just that to file this report, Feder was forcing the door to Room 511 and retrieving our equipment. He was still setting up the satellite phone and charging batteries for our equipment as I finished filing.
Other reporters caught working without proper Iraqi press passes had been put in jail, blindfolded and roughed up. The threat of similar treatment stopped seven Italian reporters and four French journalists, also under house arrest, from reporting.
But with the US advance leaving Iraqi officials distracted and their ability to monitor the Australian press hampered by the expulsion from Canberra of their diplomats, there have been no repercussions for our reporting. Telephone communications to Baghdad were limited to precious satellite phones and our work was deliberately kept off News Limted's websites.
An hour after Tuesday's attack on the hotel by a US tank, which killed two cameramen, three Iraqi officials burst into another reporter's room from where I was telephoning a report to Sydney in violation of my "house arrest" conditions.
They did not notice because their only concern was to stop the humiliation of anyone flying white flags from the hotel windows.
Senior hotel staff and two minders had conceded to me privately before last night's total abandonment that Saddam Hussein's regime was finished.
The impact of the regime's apparent fall has miraculously affected conditions in the hotel.
Yesterday morning, we were able to transfer from our filthy room, which had no power, only occasional water, no phone and no fresh linen to another room with fresh towels and sheets, running water and some power.
The change has brought an air of relief rather than celebration, because it comes a day too late for our colleagues killed and injured in the inexplicable US tank attack.
Reuters cameraman Taras Protsyuk, killed in the attack, had joked earlier in the week that despite the world thinking Baghdad was a dangerous place for reporters, it had turned out to be much safer and more comfortable than conditions in Iraq's south or north of Iraq.
"Look at us. We have water, food and no one is going to shoot at this hotel," he said over a whisky.
He was wrong.
The Australian
By PETER WILSON and JOHN FEDER in Baghdad
16apr03
ALI Ismail Abbas, the Iraqi boy who lost his arms and both his parents to a US rocket, was being evacuated last night from the Baghdad hospital where he faced certain death. Doctors feared the 12-year-old would die from his injuries. But The Daily Telegraph stepped in to arrange his rescue – an airlift to Kuwait City, where there are better medical facilities.
The Kuwaiti Government has agreed to organise treatment for the burns that cover more than a third of his body. Last-minute preparations for the mercy flight were being made early today.
The mission was organised by The Daily Telegraph's team in Baghdad after a reader who had heard of Ali's plight asked if he could help.
The Telegraph returned to Saddam City Hospital, which had been caring for Ali, to discover that previous offers of assistance and attempts by foreign aid and media groups to get him to a safer environment had come to nothing.
The US military had offered to take Ali to a hospital ship to stabilise his condition but was reluctant to take on responsibility for the child because his longer-term care needs include plastic surgery and prosthetics.
US officers felt a distant US military hospital was not the best place for him.
Saddam Hospital director Dr Mowafak Gorea had been rejecting some offers of assistance, saying he had heard plenty of promises but seen no action. Dr Gorea also said he did not want Ali taken far from the uncle and aunt who are now his guardians.
That left Ali in an unsterile ward of a hospital that is struggling to cope with scores of war-related casualties and attacks by armed looters.
With no telephone lines working in Baghdad, The Daily Telegraph shuttled between a US Navy medical officer – Petty Officer Ed Martin – and the hospital administrator before proposing neighbouring Kuwait as a solution.
Stewart Innes, a Kuwaiti-based Briton who had been working as The Daily Telegraph's Arabic translator during the war on Iraq, then used his contacts in Kuwait City to approach health and charity officials there.
Within hours, an assistant director of the Kuwaiti Health Ministry, Dr Abdul Rida Abbas, had agreed to provide help to save Ali's life and the longer-term care he needs.
After the hospital and Ali's family had agreed he could be transferred, the US military offered to provide a helicopter flight to Kuwait.
US medical officers used The Daily Telegraph's satellite phone and hotel room yesterday to speak to Kuwaiti officials to organise Ali's transfer.
A US military spokesman said air was the "safest" way to get Ali to the help he so urgently needs.
"We've been working with the Iraqi hospital officials as well as the doctors that have been taking care of him to get him moved out to make sure that he gets the proper care," the spokesman said.
"It looks like we may have worked something out with the Kuwaiti Ministry of Health."
The reader who inspired the mercy dash was Perth man Tony Trevisan, who telephoned The Daily Telegraph's sister paper The Australian to ask if he could help after reading in Monday's paper that Ali's nurse and doctors believed he could die from blood infections any day.
Meanwhile, British Prime Minister Tony Blair responded to wide coverage of Ali's plight in the British media by telling the House of Commons that every effort should be made to save Ali. Mr Blair did not know a haven in Kuwait and an evacuation flight for Ali had been organised.
Mr Blair's minders in London apparently later suggested to reporters that Mr Blair had been involved, although US military doctors insisted there had been no such role.
British television networks rushed to the hospital after Mr Blair's comments, creating a crush as the medical staff awaited the US ambulance.
Ali's parents and brother were killed in a rocket attack which destroyed their home two weeks ago. Most of his six sisters were injured in the blast as the coalition of Australian, British and US forces were pounding Baghdad before overthrowing Saddam Hussein's regime.
Ali's uncle was travelling to Kuwait City with him to.
The Daily Telegraph will assist him in Kuwait and Mr Trevisan yesterday offered money to help the uncle stay in Kuwait City for some time so Ali does not feel alone.
"I wanted to do anything I could after reading that story and seeing your [John Feder's] photograph," he said.
"It was a cruel photo to see, with those injuries and his beautiful brown eyes but it was one of the most compelling photos I have ever seen."
Peter Wilson is The Australian's European correspondent. During the war in Iraq he is on assignment for The Daily Telegraph and its fellow News Limited newspapers.
By Peter Wilson
April 19, 2003
COVERING the story of Ali Ismail Abbas has been an uplifting end to a gruelling few weeks in Iraq.
An offer of help for Ali by Perth reader Tony Trevisan led to The Australian finding the injured boy was still in an unsafe Baghdad hospital, despite warnings by his doctors he could die any day if not evacuated.
The newspaper then brought together various players for an evacuation, with Arabic translator Stewart Innes using his contacts in Kuwait, where he lives, to win the support of the Kuwaiti Government for Ali's treatment.
The fact that Ali is now almost certain to live and have a shot at a decent life does not diminish the fact that there are many more Alis in Iraq who have not caught the attention of foreigners.
The civilian casualties are in the thousands, and millions more have a desperate quality of life in a country hurt by decades of war, misrule and UN trade sanctions.
Driving from Baghdad to Kuwait City on Wednesday, Innes and I were caught off-guard during a petrol stop in southern Iraq by about a dozen children who encircled our car asking for money, then opened both back-seat doors and ran off with boxes of food and possessions.
One of the bags they took held some of the few surviving photographs of Ali's parents that his family had been able to find. We had written off the food but when we realised the photos were gone we drove after the young thieves, who eventually abandoned the pictures in a field.
There is not a lot of neat closure in wars like this one.
It is highly unlikely, for instance, that the US military will ever come up with a satisfactory reason for one of its tanks firing on the media hotel in Baghdad, killing Reuters photographer Taras Protsyuk and a Spanish cameraman a day before the tanks liberated the hotel.
The official US line is that the tank was responding to sniper fire from the hotel – a silly explanation discredited by the many cameras and reporters in the hotel and on its roof and balconies at the time.
A couple of days later I stumbled on the commanding officer of the offending tank battalion, Colonel Phillip Decamp, in his new command centre in one of Saddam Hussein's palaces.
Asked what the tank attack was all about, the super-confident colonel did not even mention the snipers of the official explanation.
The tank had come under fire from rocket-propelled grenades, he said, and its crew thought it could see spotters in the hotel. No, he insisted, the crew did not know what everybody else in Baghdad seemed to know, that the hotel was the main base of the foreign media, crammed with journalists.
"And it was dark, very dark," he claimed. I looked at him with open disbelief – the attack came at precisely noon on a bright clear day – and he quickly added an extra explanation, the only one that is at all convincing.
The tank crews were angry, he said, because one of their commanders had been shot in the throat by an Iraqi. "And they don't like it when one of their guys gets hit."
So there you have it. The US crew were cranky, became more trigger-happy than usual and adopted the blast-away policy that has cost many civilian lives in Baghdad and scared the hell out of British troops working alongside the Americans.
So Protsyuk died at 35, leaving his widow Lydia and eight-year-old son Denis behind in Poland.