We reject arresting
and spreading fear and intimidation
Sulaymaniyah, May 19th 2024, seeking the Iraqi panel
code in the publishing cases is a step backward, in the case of journalist Shakar
Star, police should have investigated not the regional Security Agency.
According to the statement by (Shakar Star)’s wife for Metro,
while him, his wife and their two children one being one and a half years old
and the other 6, were on their way back home from Sulaymaniyah to Erbil, they
were arrested by a security force in Koya checkpoint, and were driven to Sulaymaniyah
security in a miliary vehicle, but they were
released.
After contacting some authorities, Metro Center expected journalist
Shakar Star to be released on bail, but instead of releasing him, the Kurdistan
Regional Government (KRG) said he was detained under Article 226 of the Iraqi
Penal Code.
The KRG said in a statement that all the charges against
Shakar are "preparing and submitting a series of reports" that he
described as "false and misleading" for an unofficial page.
According to the statement, the complainant, the Kurdistan
Regional Security Agency, is investigating the case itself.
Can the complainant himself/herself commit the process of
arrestment and investigation themselves in the cases of "Offences relating
to publication"?
Then why didn't the Kurdistan Regional Security Agency give
any explanation as to why Shakar's two children and wife were taken in a
military vehicle from Koya to the Sulaimani Security Agency?
In recent years, several instructions have been issued to
the security agencies that no security agency except the police can summon
journalists in cases related to publication, only by order of a judge.
Metro Center strongly condemns the arrest and investigation
of the journalist by the security agencies, intimidation of his family, demands
that he be released on bail and transfer his case to the police and change the
legal article to the articles of the Journalism Law.
Metro has been campaigning against false information and
misleading news for years, constantly emphasizing that journalists are not
exempt from professional mistakes and political influence, and calls on any
citizen and institution that is harmed by journalists' reports and news to
resort to the Journalism Law.