Reporters protested the Iraqi Army’s measures of not allowing them to provide news coverage on the relocation of Ashraf residents, al-Sumariya TV reported.
The transfer of Camp Ashraf residents to their new location led to the reporters’ ID cards being confiscated and all of them being held for more than 10 hours in the Iraqi Army Fifth Division base in Diyala, al-Sumariya TV added.
“I swear to God all the people here don’t know what they are here for,” one reporter said. “After 3 to 4 hours, not even one person has said hi to us; there is no respect for us and there is no place for us to wait or even go to the restroom.”
Another reporter complained, “Nobody knows who is responsible or who the coordinator for us to speak with is.”
“Neither the Prime Ministry nor the Ministry of Defense will answer to us and we don’t know who invited us,” a third reporter added.
Al-Sumariya TV continued in its report, “When the representatives of the media attempted to leave the Fifth Division base and return to Baghdad, they were not allowed to use the same vehicles they had come to Diyala with and they were forced to depart the base by foot. The reporters said, ‘We weren’t able to see the senior official who provided this excuse for not allowing us to leave the base by saying members of the People’s Mojahedin Organization had conditioned their departure from their base on media outlets and reporters not being present. But these remarks bring up this question that why were the reporters invited to the base? And if this excuse is correct, how can they explain the aggression against reporters, and the disrespect and insult they were faced with.”