Demand for the Immediate Release of Dr Fadhil Al Bedrani
Member of the BRussells Tribunal Advisory Committee & participant in the World Tribunal on Iraq held by US Forces
Friday, 15 September 2006, Brussels
The BRussells Tribunal today demands that the US government immediately release Dr Fadhil Al Bedrani and all members of his family who were taken into US military custody 12 September 2006.
Dr Fadhil Al Bedrani is a professor of journalism and a prominent patriotic writer known for his anti-occupation stand and whose reports appear on Al-Jazeera as well as Reuters and the BBC. When talking about the difficulty of getting news out of Iraq and into mainstream media, he said: “we report but they censor.”
Little information is yet available, but some reports say that as many as 65 members of Dr Bedrani’s family were arrested with him. It is also reported that US forces killed Dr Bedrani’s brother, Fayez Al Bedrani, a student at the Islamic Sciences College. Another brother, Abdul Qadir Mohamad Al Bedrani, also a reporter for Reuters, was shot by the US and Iraqi troops in Fallujah in August 2005.
The BRussells Tribunal condemns the detention of Dr Fadhil Al Bedrani and his family and demands assurances of his wellbeing and that of his relatives, as well as his immediate release and the release of all family members, and all political prisoners in Iraq.
We call on news agencies, human rights organisations, national and international press associations and freedom of expression advocacy groups to stand in solidarity with Dr Bedrani and take immediate action to help secure the release of both him and his family.
In a week in which three journalists in Iraq have been assassinated and others arrested, and in the context of over 140 Iraqi media workers killed since 2003, Dr Bedrani’s arrest illustrates a deepening campaign of the US occupation against freedom of speech in Iraq. It further illustrates that the US plan for Iraq has failed and that all the US can now propose is repression.
Occupation should end.
The BRussells Tribunal Committee
Please circulate this appeal widely. For more information contact:
http://www.brusselstribunal.org/JournalistKilled.htm