Atwar Bahjat

Atwar Bahjat (‎; 7 June 1976 – 22 February 2006) was an Iraqi journalist. Initially a reporter for Iraq's state-controlled television under Saddam Hussein, Bahjat became a popular television correspondent for al-Jazeera and later al-Arabiya following the US invasion of Iraq. On 22 February 2006, Bahjat was shot dead along with her colleagues Adnan Al Dulaimi and Khalid Al Fellahi while covering a story in Samarra.

Life and career Bahjat was born in Samarra. Her mother was a Shia and her father a Sunni.

Following the US invasion of Iraq, she began work at al-Jazeera. Initially assigned to culture stories, she persisted in her reporting and was eventually assigned to political coverage of the Governing Council.

Murder On 22 February 2006, the Shia Al Askari Mosque in Samarra was hit by a bomb attack, which triggered waves of retaliatory violence between Sunnis and Shias. Bahjat persuaded her editors to let her travel to the scene.

The official government story of what happened next and who the perpetrators were has changed three times in the last decade and is fiercely contested by both Atwar's family and the families of her colleagues. The victims' families, who retrieved the bodies from Samarra and interviewed the sole survivor and local police, say the government's account is contradicted by eyewitnesses and medical reports, they state categorically that Atwar was not raped, and say the tragedy is being politicized to further divide Iraq.

Investigation On 7 May 2006, the British Sunday Times published an article by Hala Jaber, in which she describes watching a video of Bahjat being stripped of her clothing and beheaded. The video was later proven to show the murder of a Nepalese man by The Army of Ansar al-Sunna in August 2004. On 28 May 2006 The Sunday Times retracted the story, saying it had been the victim of a hoax.

In 2009, Yasser al-Takhi was captured along with his brothers and forced to make a videotape confession to Bahjat's rape and murder which was then broadcast on Iraqi Television.

Posthumous recognition In 2006, the Committee to Protect Journalists posthumously awarded an International Press Freedom Award to Bahjat. Bahjat was also recognized posthumously by the Nieman Foundation for Journalism of Harvard University, which awarded her its Louis Lyons Award.

Megan K. Stack's Every Man in This Village Is a Liar: An Education in War, a finalist for the 2010 National Book Award for Nonfiction, has a section devoted to Bahjat.