{"id":41251,"date":"2019-10-19T02:23:34","date_gmt":"2019-10-19T02:23:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=41251"},"modified":"2019-10-19T02:23:34","modified_gmt":"2019-10-19T02:23:34","slug":"israeli-forces-shoot-dead-palestinian-at-west-bank-checkpoint","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=41251","title":{"rendered":"Israeli forces shoot dead Palestinian at West Bank checkpoint"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

\nBAGHDAD: A prominent Iraqi blogger resurfaced Friday a day after he was seized by masked gunmen, his father said, as Amnesty International denounced a \u201cclimate of fear\u201d in the country after protests and deadly violence.
Shujaa Al-Khafaji\u2019s family said armed men had snatched him from his home on Thursday without identifying themselves or showing an arrest warrant.
Khafaji\u2019s Facebook page, Al-Khowa Al-Nadifa (Arabic for \u201cThose Who Have Clean Hands\u201c), carries posts on political and social issues and has some 2.5 million followers.
\u201cAround 15 men wearing masks and black uniforms\u201d took Khafaji from his home, the blogger\u2019s father, Fares Al-Khafaji, told AFP.
He said they seized his son\u2019s phones and computers, but were not violent.
Twenty-four hours later, Khafaji was \u201cabandoned in a street with $20 to pay for a taxi home,\u201d his father added.
The report of Khafaji\u2019s seizure sparked an outcry from activists and influential political leaders.
Rights watchdog Amnesty International denounced a \u201crelentless campaign of intimidation and assault against activists in Iraq\u201d by authorities.
\u201cThe Iraqi authorities must immediately rein in the security forces and dismantle the climate of fear they have deliberately created to stop Iraqis from peacefully exercising their rights to freedoms of expression and assembly,\u201d said Lynn Maalouf, the group\u2019s Middle East research director.
The group said other activists, including a doctor and a lawyer, were \u201cforcibly disappeared more than 10 days ago,\u201d and called on Iraqi authorities to reveal their whereabouts.
Firebrand Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr wrote on Twitter that \u201cany act of aggression (against journalists or activists)… by the state constitutes an attack on freedom of speech.\u201d
Former prime minister Haider Al-Abadi\u2019s parliamentary bloc called on the government \u201cto stop abuses of free media.\u201d
Iraq was gripped by anti-government protests between October 1 and 6, during which 110 people, mainly demonstrators, were killed in clashes with security forces.
During the protests, unidentified armed men in uniforms raided several local television stations in Baghdad, destroying their equipment and intimidating their staff.
Journalists and activists also reported receiving threats, mostly by phone, from unidentified callers accusing them of having sided with the protesters.
Khafaji faced online harassment last month after a string of attacks on bases of the Hashed Al-Shaabi, a paramilitary force dominated by pro-Iran groups.
The group on Thursday denied any involvement in the disappearance of activists, threatening legal action against anyone making such accusations.
But according to Amnesty, the Hashed was involved in at least one abduction \u2014 that of lawyer Ali Hattab, who represented protesters and was seized on October 8 in the southern city of Amara.
He was snatched by \u201csuspected members of a faction of the Popular Mobilization Units (Hashed),\u201d Amnesty said quoting Hattab\u2019s relatives.
It happened two days after \u201ctwo armed men from the PMU came to (his) home to warn him to stop being vocal about the killing of protesters on Facebook, otherwise they would kill him,\u201d Amnesty added.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BAGHDAD: A prominent Iraqi blogger resurfaced Friday a day after he was seized by masked gunmen, his father said, as Amnesty International denounced a \u201cclimate of fear\u201d in the country after protests and deadly violence.Shujaa Al-Khafaji\u2019s family said armed men had snatched him from his home on Thursday without identifying themselves or showing an arrest…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":41252,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-41251","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41251","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=41251"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41251\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/41252"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=41251"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=41251"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=41251"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}