CPJ condemns murder of journalists

NEW YORK, NOV. 20. The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has expressed outrage at the apparent murder of four journalists who were seized yesterday while traveling between Jalalabad and Kabul.

The journalists have been identified by their news organisations as Azizullah Haidari, an Afghan-born photographer for the Reuters news agency; Harry Burton, an Australian television cameraman for Reuters; Julio Fuentes, a Spanish correspondent for the Madrid- based newspaper El Mundo; and Maria Grazia Cutuli, an Italian journalist for the Milan-based newspaper Corriere della Sera.

``War is no justification for murder,'' said the CPJ executive director, Ms. Ann Cooper. ``If these four journalists were in fact executed, then the perpetrators must be brought to justice.'' The journalists were traveling through the eastern Nangarhar Province at the head of a convoy of six to eight vehicles when they were stopped by a group of armed men, according to news reports. Gunmen dragged the four journalists out of the front two cars, marched them into the surrounding hills, and executed them using Kalashnikov rifles, according to a driver and translator who were allowed to flee and later spoke to the BBC.

Three other journalists were killed last week while reporting in northern Afghanistan. Johanne Sutton, a reporter for Radio France Internationale; Pierre Billaud, a reporter for Radio Television Luxembourg; and Volker Handloik, a freelance reporter on assignment for the German news magazine Stern, were shot dead on the evening of November 11 when Taliban forces fired on their Northern Alliance military convoy.

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