MTuesday evening at Baghdada camera records everything. A car approaches the American journalist Shelly Kittleson while walking down the street in the capital of Iraq, armed men get out and force her to get on board. The video, released by Al Arabiya and taken up by numerous Arab newspapers, shows the kidnapping in real time. Iraqi security forces stopped one of the alleged perpetrators and seized one of the vehicles. At the time the news broke, however, the journalist had not yet been located.
Who kidnapped the journalist: the Iranian trail
Dylan Johnson, US Deputy Secretary of State, he wrote on X That «an individual with links to the pro-Iranian Kataib Hezbollah militia believed to be involved in the kidnapping has been taken into custody» by the Iraqi authorities. According to sources CNNThe American government had already warned Shelly Kittleson in the previous weeks of a concrete threatkidnapping or murder, by the Shiite paramilitary group, asking her several times to leave the country. She had stayed. “The State Department fulfilled its duty to warn this individual,” Johnson said, confirming that the FBI and Iraqi authorities are working towards his release.
A frame from a video published on X by Open Source Intel showing “the kidnapping of US journalist Shelly Kittleson in Baghdad”. (X/OPEN SOURCE INTEL)
Who is Shelly Kittleson
Freelance specialized in the Middle East, Kittleson has been reporting on Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq for years for newspapers like Al-Monitor, BBC, Political, Foreign Policy. In Italy, the readers of the magazine know it The Sheeton which his piece on Iraqi Kurdistan was published on Tuesday, and the listeners of Rai Radio 3for which he had created a podcast on Afghan justice reform. Based in Baghdad, his profile X (formerly Twitter) still showed activity on the morning of the kidnapping. Al-Monitor called for “his immediate and safe release,” calling his work “vital to the understanding of the region.”
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