- Young kick-ass Reporter who the USA TORTURES
for eleven months is about to go back to CANADA, expose everything the
US is doing in AFGHANISTAN, and gets murdered on the eve of his departure.
-
- Javed Yazamy, Truth telling freelance journalist, slain
in Kandahar by US FORCES.
-
- This murder is a George Clooney movie script. There
is no doubt in my mind Hollywood is going to buy this story as soon as
one of those Canadian reporters writes it up. (No American news agency
covered his murder.)
-
- This brave, unvetted Journalist in Afghanistan - a fixer
for all Candian reporters, a total gadfly to the US - was a kid so
connected to everybody he worked with (including the Taliban, whom he was
able to penetrate, so that he knew the other side's point of view and carried
that info to the CANADIAN REPORTERS. A kid so dangerous to the American
military with its heroin running to get cash for dirty tricks that the
USA jailed him for 11 months, tortured. him for info, probably got nothing.
Finally, as Canadian press is going crazy, the USA lets him go. He now
rats America out in detail like a true expose journalist telling all the
horrific kinds of torture they practice, shames America across the world
(as all the other international journalists in the area respect and adore
him, evinced by his nickname, JOJO). He got out late Sept, and now, in
MARCH 2009, he was about to go to live in Canada so he could write a book
about what the USA did to him and maybe what they were actually doing in
AFGHANISTAN.
-
-
- <http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/mar2009/afgh-m11.shtml>OBAMA
JUST SIGNED ON TO WREAK WAR on the place (<http://www.masterjules.net/pipeline.htm>PIPELINE
requires that). So, they killed him. HE was days away from leaving for
a safe country. So who killed him? Where was the CUI BONUM? It is
the US MILITARY/CIA drug runners and OBAMA and his war. That's who. Everybody
else adored, admired and respected him. Someone that valiant doesn't live
when you have a NAZI country around. - Anita Sands
-
-
- KANDAHAR, Afghanistan - Javed "JoJo" Yazamy
loved Hollywood movies, mostly action flicks. For the Afghan freelance
cameraman, reporter and "fixer" for media outlets covering Canada's
military mission in Afghanistan, pirated DVDs were a perfect way to sharpen
his English. They were also a window on a world he often struggled to understand-and
desperately wanted to join. He never got the chance.
-
- Yazamy - also known as Javed Ahmad but known to most
by his nickname, Jojo - was gunned down Tuesday evening in a brazen drive-by
shooting in Kandahar city. There was no ready explanation for the killing,
nor any claim of responsibility.
-
- Just days before his death, Yazamy had asked fellow journalists
to write letters of reference for his Canadian visitor's visa application,
which he was to present to authorities early next month.
-
- He said he wanted to see the country whose news coverage
he helped shape during several bloody years in Kandahar.
-
- The deaths of four Canadian soldiers in the last week
forced his would-be references to put off his request, a setback Yazamy
shrugged off with the refined understanding that the news comes before
all else.
-
- "Ya, it's fine, bro," he said in an email,
responding to the apologies of one journalist. "Get it to me next
week."
-
- Yazamy, 23, was shot in his vehicle along a main boulevard
in Kandahar city, not far from the governor's palace, when another car
pulled along the passenger side and a gunman opened fire. He died instantly,
said Dr. Qasim Khan, the physician who pronounced him dead.
-
- Kandahar's provincial police chief refused to comment
on the killing Tuesday, but provincial governor Tooryalai Wesa said an
investigation was underway.
-
- "It is disgusting a journalist has been killed like
that in the city," said Wesa, an Afghan-Canadian who was sworn in
as governor only a few months ago.
-
- Police were looking for a white Toyota Corolla - a ubiquitous
description of one of Kandahar's most common vehicles, and one that's often
heard in the wake of violent crimes in the city.
-
- Yazamy worked primarily as a cameraman for CTV News,
but was often hired on a day-to-day basis by other media organizations
as well, including The Canadian Press, and routinely proved an asset to
virtually every Canadian journalist working in the violence-racked country.
-
- His extensive contacts and connections across Afghanistan,
including with the Taliban, appeared to land him in trouble late in 2007
when he was abruptly detained by U.S. soldiers outside the gates to Kandahar
Airfield.
-
- Yazamy spent some 11 months in military custody and was
publicly named as an "enemy combatant" by American forces before
he was set free in September 2008. No explanation, either for his detention
or his release, was ever proffered.
-
- CTV News president Robert Hurst spoke fondly of spending
several days in Kandahar with Yazamy, who toured him around the region
to give him a sense of the country and its character.
-
- "I found him a terrific young journalist who was
courageous, (who) had a world view - we were very lucky at CTV to have
him as a fixer," Hurst said Tuesday in an interview. Yazamy learned
most of his camera skills during his time with CTV, he added.
-
- "I think this is a loss for Afghan journalism, in
addition to being a loss to international and Canadian journalism,"
Hurst said.
-
- "JoJo, as our cameraman in Kandahar area, was directly
instrumental in helping us bring the Afghan story home to Canadian living
rooms every night. We're deeply saddened by all of this."
-
- The Canadian wing of the international advocacy group
Reporters Without Borders issued a statement Tuesday offering condolences
to Yazamy's family and calling on Afghan authorities to investigate the
shooting and bring his killers to justice.
-
- "He was a talented and promising young journalist
who had the courage to work with foreign news media," the statement
said.
-
- Several Afghan journalists have said they suspect Yazamy's
death was ordered by the Taliban, the statement added.
-
- Yazamy worked for U.S. special forces in 2001, soon after
the overthrow of the Taliban regime. It was where he acquired a taste for
country music.
-
- He swept floors at their compound, but having learned
rudimentary English while in exile in Pakistan, the ambitious teenager
soon found himself doing translation work.
-
- U.S. television networks followed in the wake of the
invasion and Yazamy began "fixing" for Western reporters, providing
translation and transportation services. He soon came into his element
as a journalist, conducting interviews and shooting video in places too
risky for westerners.
-
- His knowledge and advice on personal safety was universally
respected by Canadian journalists in Afghanistan, many of whom had no qualms
about putting their lives in his hands.
-
- That was why his capture by U.S. commandos at Kandahar
Airfield in October 2007, and the subsequent claim he was an enemy combatant,
stunned those who worked with him.
-
- Yazamy acknowledged that in his journalistic work he
had occasional contact with the Taliban. But he denied ever having collaborated
with them.
-
- "I am innocent," he said in an interview last
September, following 11 months in captivity.
-
- He told Reporters Without Borders: "I feel even
more of a journalist than before.
-
- "I am very enthusiastic about the idea of going
back to work. But above all, I want justice. I want to knock on all the
doors, with my lawyers, so that those who detained and tortured me are
punished."
-
- He also said he'd been planning to write a book about
the experience.
-
- * * * * *
- Reporter covered his emergence from year due to his canadian
friends helping him, in jail (below)
-
- http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM
- 20080922.wafghanfixer22/BNStory/Afghanistan/home
-
- STANFORD UNIVERSITY LAW PROFESSOR & HUMAN RIGHTS
WORKER covered it:
-
- http://www.law.stanford.edu/news/details/2302/U.S.%20Frees%
- 20Afghan%20Fixer%20After%2010-Month
%20Detention%20He%20Describes%20As%20'Hell'/
-
- Copyright © 2009 The Canadian Press. All rights
reserved
|
