Author: Hala Jaber
Publication: The Sunday Times
Date: May 07, 2006
URL: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2089-2168496,00.html
Even by the stupefying standards of Iraq's
unspeakable violence, the murder of Atwar Bahjat, one of the country's top
television journalists, was an act of exceptional cruelty.
Nobody but her killers knew just how much
she had suffered until a film showing her death on February 22 at the hands
of two musclebound men in military uniforms emerged last week. Her family's
worst fears of what might have happened have been far exceeded by the reality.
Bahjat was abducted after making three live
broadcasts from the edge of her native city of Samarra on the day its golden-domed
Shi'ite mosque was blown up, allegedly by Sunni terrorists.
Roadblocks prevented her from entering the
city and her anxiety was obvious to everyone who saw her final report. Night
was falling and tensions were high.
Two men drove up in a pick-up truck, asking
for her. She appealed to a small crowd that had gathered around her crew but
nobody was willing to help her. It was reported at the time that she had been
shot dead with her cameraman and sound man.
We now know that it was not that swift for
Bahjat. First she was stripped to the waist, a humiliation for any woman but
particularly so for a pious Muslim who concealed her hair, arms and legs from
men other than her father and brother.
Then her arms were bound behind her back.
A golden locket in the shape of Iraq that became her glittering trademark
in front of the television cameras must have been removed at some point -
it is nowhere to be seen in the grainy film, which was made by someone who
pointed a mobile phone at her as she lay on a patch of earth in mortal terror.
By the time filming begins, the condemned
woman has been blindfolded with a white bandage.
It is stained with blood that trickles from
a wound on the left side of her head. She is moaning, although whether from
the pain of what has already been done to her or from the fear of what is
about to be inflicted is unclear.
Just as Bahjat bore witness to countless atrocities
that she covered for her television station, Al-Arabiya, during Iraq's descent
into sectarian conflict, so the recording of her execution embodies the depths
of the country's depravity after three years of war.
A large man dressed in military fatigues,
boots and cap approaches from behind and covers her mouth with his left hand.
In his right hand, he clutches a large knife with a black handle and an 8in
blade. He proceeds to cut her throat from the middle, slicing from side to
side.
Her cries - "Ah, ah, ah" - can be
heard above the "Allahu akbar" (God is greatest) intoned by the
holder of the mobile phone.
Even then, there is no quick release for Bahjat.
Her executioner suddenly stands up, his job only half done. A second man in
a dark T-shirt and camouflage trousers places his right khaki boot on her
abdomen and pushes down hard eight times, forcing a rush of blood from her
wounds as she moves her head from right to left.
Only now does the executioner return to finish
the task. He hacks off her head and drops it to the ground, then picks it
up again and perches it on her bare chest so that it faces the film-maker
in a grotesque parody of one of her pieces to camera.
The voice of one of the Arab world's most
highly regarded and outspoken journalists has been silenced. She was 30.
As a friend of Bahjat who had worked with
her on a variety of tough assignments, I found it hard enough to bear the
news of her murder. When I saw it replayed, it was as if part of me had died
with her. How much more gruelling it must have been for a close family friend
who watched the film this weekend and cried when he heard her voice.
The friend, who cannot be identified, knew
nothing of her beheading but had been guarding other horrifying details of
Bahjat's ordeal. She had nine drill holes in her right arm and 10 in her left,
he said. The drill had also been applied to her legs, her navel and her right
eye. One can only hope that these mutilations were made after her death.
There is a wider significance to the appalling
footage and the accompanying details. The film appears to show for the first
time an Iraqi death squad in action.
The death squads have proliferated in recent
months, spreading terror on both sides of the sectarian divide. The clothes
worn by Bahjat's killers are bound to be scrutinised for clues to their identity.
Bahjat, with her professionalism and impartiality
as a half-Shi'ite, half-Sunni, would have been the first to warn against any
hasty conclusions, however. The uniforms seem to be those of the Iraqi National
Guard but that does not mean she was murdered by guardsmen. The fatigues could
have been stolen for disguise.
A source linked to the Sunni insurgency who
supplied the film to The Sunday Times in London claimed it had come from a
mobile phone found on the body of a Shi'ite Badr Brigade member killed during
fighting in Baghdad.
But there is no evidence the Iranian-backed
Badr militia was responsible. Indeed, there are conflicting indications. The
drill is said to be a popular tool of torture with the Badr Brigade. But beheading
is a hallmark of Al-Qaeda in Iraq, led by the Sunni Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
According to a report that was circulating
after Bahjat's murder, she had enraged the Shi'ite militias during her coverage
of the bombing of the Samarra shrine by filming the interior minister, Bayan
Jabr, ordering police to release two Iranians they had arrested.
There is no confirmation of this and the Badr
Brigade, with which she maintained good relations, protected her family after
her funeral came under attack in Baghdad from a bomber and then from a gunman.
Three people died that day.
Bahjat's reporting of terrorist attacks and
denunciations of violence to a wide audience across the Middle East made her
plenty of enemies among both Shi'ite and Sunni gunmen. Death threats from
Sunnis drove her away to Qatar for a spell but she believed her place was
in Iraq and she returned to frontline reporting despite the risks.
We may never know who killed Bahjat or why.
But the manner of her death testifies to the breakdown of law, order and justice
that she so bravely highlighted and illustrates the importance of a cause
she espoused with passion.
Bahjat advocated the unity of Iraq and saw
her golden locket as a symbol of her belief. She put it with her customary
on-air eloquence on the last day of her life: "Whether you are a Sunni,
a Shi'ite or a Kurd, there is no difference between Iraqis united in fear
for this nation."
