Iraq's Endangered Journalists

NYT:

I have experienced nearly all of these threats firsthand. In May 2004, a Canadian journalist and I were seized by insurgents inside Falluja. I was able to convince our captors that the Canadian, who spoke no Arabic, was not a Westerner but my older brother, and that he had suffered a stroke that left him unable to speak.

A month later, National Public Radio sent me to Najaf to report on a protest against the fighting between the Americans and the Mahdi Army. Iraqi police officers handcuffed me, beat me and dragged me into the main government building. The governor’s deputy released me on the condition that I not take Mr. Sadr’s side in my reporting.

The Mahdi Army then arrested me that September, in the Sadr City slum of northeastern Baghdad. I had been reporting from the hospital, where I was interviewing injured civilians. The militia men took me to a mosque, where a very young sheik questioned me. I lied about my employer, which was still National Public Radio, saying instead that I worked for a German station. He told me that I had better not be a spy, or else. My identity papers were copied and returned to me.

Here.