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Waldemar Milewicz (August 20, 1956 in Dobre Miasto – May 7, 2004 in Latifiya) was a famous Polish journalist and war correspondent who was killed in a drive-by shooting in Iraq by the members of extremist group Jama'at al-Tawhid wal-Jihad.
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Life and career
Milewicz's undergraduate studies were in psychology. In 1981 he started his career in the Polish public television, TVP. Since 1991 he was working in the news division. He travelled all over the world to most areas of armed conflict, among others Abkhazia, Bosnia, Cambodia, Chechnya, Ethiopia, Kosovo, Somalia and Rwanda, for his television reporting and documentaries. Because of to excellent documentary series Dziwny jest ten świat ("This is a Strange World") Milewicz became one of the best-known reporters in Poland.[1] In 2003 he also went to cover the Iraq War, staying at the Polish military base. The mission to Iraq was meant to be the last correspondent mission of Milewicz, because of his health problems.
Death
On May 7, 2004, the Polish TV crew's car, clearly marked as a press vehicle, has been returning from an interview with the Iraqi insurgents in Baghdad to the Polish base Camp Babilon at Najaf. It was followed by a group of armed men in another car. The attackers caught up with them and opened fire from behind, riddling the journalists' car with bullets. Milewicz was hit first and died instantly. Another member of his crew, editor and translator Mounir Bouamrane (a Polish-Algerian who had been working for about 15 years for TVP) was killed on the site when he had left the vehicle. The crew's cameraman Jerzy Ernst, who was in the car while trying to remove the body of Milewicz, was wounded in the arm by the second volley of gunfire, while their Iraqi driver and guide Assir Kamel al Kazzaz escaped the attack unharmed.
Arrests
In 2006, thanks to a tip from a rival Shia militia in Baghdad area, a team of the Polish military intelligence detained three alleged killers of the Polish journalists: Kifah Hamid Asman, Alim Hussein, and their local cell's leader Salah Khabbas (a former Baath Party member who later associated himself with al-Qaeda in Iraq). During his arrest Khabbas offered $100,000 for letting him go. The suspects testified they were informed that journalists were heading in their direction by the corrupt Iraqi Police officers, who had inspected the victims' car as they were leaving Baghdad.[2] The detainees also confessed to several other attacks, including roadside bombings and kidnappings for ransom. They however later "vanished" after they were handed-over to the American and Iraqi forces.[3]
Honours
Milewicz received many awards and prizes for his work, among them the SAIS-Ciba Prize for Excellence in Journalism by Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore in 1995 (for his work in Chechnya), the Polish Grand Press Journalist of the Year Award in 2001, as well as several state awards, including two Order of Polonia Restituta medals (Knight's Cross in 2002 and Officer's Cross posthumously).
References
External links
- (Polish) Unofficial website about Waldemar Milewicz
- Waldemar Milewicz Killed in Iraq (International Freedom of Expression Exchange)
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