Reuters Iraq bureau chief threatened, denounced over story

LONDON — The Baghdad bureau chief for Reuters has left Iraq after he was threatened on Facebook and denounced by a Shiite paramilitary group's satellite news channel in reaction to a Reuters report last week that detailed lynching and looting in the city of Tikrit.

The threats against journalist Ned Parker began on an Iraqi Facebook page run by a group that calls itself "the Hammer" and is believed by an Iraqi security source to be linked to armed Shiite groups. The April 5 post and subsequent comments demanded he be expelled from Iraq. One commenter said that killing Parker was "the best way to silence him, not kick him out”.

Three days later, a news show on Al Ahd, a television station owned by Iranian-backed armed group Asaib Ahl Al Haq, broadcast a segment on Parker that included a photo of him. The segment accused the reporter and Reuters of denigrating Iraq and its government-backed forces, and called on viewers to demand Parker be expelled.

The pressure followed an April 3 report by Parker and two colleagues detailing human rights abuses in Tikrit after government forces and Iranian-backed militias liberated the city from Daesh terror group. Two Reuters journalists in the city witnessed the lynching of a Daesh fighter by Iraqi federal police. The report also described widespread incidents of looting and arson in the city, which local politicians blamed on Iranian-backed militias.

A Reuters spokeswoman said the agency stood by the accuracy and fairness of its report. Facebook, acting on a request from Reuters, removed a series of threatening posts this week.

The threats appear to be part of a broader power struggle in Iraq. The country is divided between its Shiite Muslim majority, which now dominates the government, and its Sunni Muslim minority, which held sway under the late dictator Saddam Hussein. Prime Minister Haidar Al Abadi, a moderate Shiite, is attempting to defeat Daesh — a radical Sunni offshoot of Al Qaeda that has seized huge portions of Iraqi territory — while at the same time trying to mend fences with the broader Sunni community.

The Iraqi military is rebuilding following its collapse last June. That has forced Abadi's government to rely on a constellation of Shiite paramilitary forces backed by Iran. The paramilitary forces, which include Asaib Ahl Al Haq, routinely denounce Western media coverage of Iraq's internal conflict.

Abadi is scheduled to meet US President Barack Obama in Washington on April 14 to discuss the campaign against Daesh.

Rafid Jaboori, a spokesman for Abadi, said the government was "definitely against any message that encourages hatred or intimidation, whether it comes from a local or international network”. At the same time, the Al Ahd segment "was primarily a criticism of the government, something that we have to live with" he said.