Refugee's husband killed 'because he was journalist'

IRAQ:IN JANUARY 2004, Shahlaa Hishmat found herself in the presenter's chair at Baghdad's Sumer FM, one of the slew of radio stations that sprang up after Saddam's overthrow. She fulfilled a long-held ambition as the voice of Have a Good Day.

She had already abandoned her career as a practising lawyer to pursue her interest in media, and back then she might have dared count herself fortunate. Her husband Ra'id Qais worked as a correspondent on Voice of Iraq, another new radio station, and she had just given birth to their first child.

"I felt at the time that I was in a safe place . . . the serial killing of journalists and media figures was in its initial stages at that time," she recalls. "My husband and I were happy with our work."

Not that they took any chances. Taxi drivers would be asked to drop Hishmat a few streets away from the radio station, just in case; and Ra'id turned down a job offer from a TV station for fear of becoming too easily recognised.

"We felt happy, but at the same time we felt fearful because we felt that sooner or later somebody might come and kidnap us. We had colleagues who were kidnapped and we don't know until this day whether they are alive or dead," says Hishmat.

Speaking at the Dublin launch of a book of testimonies by Iraqi human rights defenders by Frontline, an advocacy group, Hishmat - a warm, engaging speaker with a presenter's polish - barely pauses between memories of the couple's happier times and her retelling of the day it all turned in on itself. It came that suddenly.

In mid-October 2006, during Ramadan, Ra'id left the house one day to buy some sweets and yoghurt for the breaking of the fast. His little sister went with him, but Hishmat stayed home with their one-year-old son Aihab, who was sleeping. "Only 10 minutes had gone by when I heard screams. They were saying: 'They've killed Ra'id! They've killed Ra'id!'" she says.

"I went like a crazy woman and saw a body in his car. I asked many people to come and carry him from his car to another car, but nobody helped me. When they shot him, people came to carry my husband to hospital, but the gunmen said: 'Keep away from him. We'll kill anybody who comes to help him.'"

After ramming his car with a pick-up lorry, a gunman shot Ra'id five times, killing him instantly and leaving his sister sitting beside his motionless body.

In the rush to flee, Hishmat left all her belongings behind, abandoning her house that night. She never returned. Not long afterwards she and Aihab travelled to her sister in Galway and were eventually granted refugee status.

She hears contradictory stories on how much life has improved in Baghdad - security is better, but relatives still tell her despairingly of trying to manage with an hour of electricity a day. As a refugee, Hishmat cannot visit Iraq until she has Irish citizenship, and that will take at least five years. But she admits to feeling homesick, and yearns to see her family: "I have my family there. Just three days ago my mother died. I'm here, she was there, and I didn't see her."

Ra'id Qais is one of 217 journalists and media assistants killed in Iraq since March 2003, according to Reporters without Borders. "I can't say who was behind the killing of my husband," says his widow. "Sometimes I think a militia, sometimes al-Qaeda. I'm confused." And as for why? "Because he was a journalist."