Hi everybody,
Some you guys knows me from Iraq, I am an Iraqi-Kurdish journalist based in New York and I am in Baghdad right now, I worked as a reporter/photographer for The New York Times for more than 2 years in Baghdad and now I am working as a cameraman for the Frontline-PBS.
I think this story explains what happened to me today in Baghdad, you guys be careful and stay safe.

On Saturday, November 4th at around roughly 11:15am, PBS FRONTLINE
Field Producer and Cameraman, Warzer Jaff was on his way to Sadr City
to conduct an interview with a member of the Iraqi national assembly and a Sadr follower. He was with
two relatives. Near Nasr Square in the Battaween neighborhood of
Baghdad, Jaff spotted a burning car—presumably a car bomb that had
just gone off—-and got off to film with his small Sony Z1U, property
of PBS. Jaff was filming the burning car when he heard the sound of
Strycker vehicles coming from behind. He panned with his camera from
the burning car to the direction of the Strycker convoy, when he
heard gunfire. The soldiers in the convoy were shooting in the air
and shouting “Don’t move mother fucker.” Jaff put down his camera,
but did not switch it off. A dozen bystanders ran away from the
gunfire. Two soldiers got out of the Strycker and grabbed Jaff by the
neck and forced him against a nearby car. He was shoved and grabbed
roughly by the neck. Jaff, who is perfectly fluent in English, told
them he was a journalist working with PBS FRONTLINE and had CPIC
credentials in his breast pocket. One soldier shouted back that “I
don’t give a shit.” A second soldier proceeded to throw the Z1U
camera on the ground, then grabbed Jaff by the neck again and shouted
at him: “You mother fucker, I don’t give a fuck. You fucking
journalist.” Jaff was then forced into the Strycker vehicle while
protesting that he was an accredited journalist that was covering a
story for PBS FRONTLINE. He told the soldiers that he had been
embedded with the Army over twelve times, “Just call CPIC. I’m based
in New York. I work for PBS FRONTLINE. All you have to do is call
CPIC and get them to confirm who I am.” Inside the Strycker, Jaff was
forcibly shoved onto the floor. Jaff noticed there were another
three or four soldiers inside. Upon being
shoved, he was immediately hand cuffed from behind and blindfolded
with a thick material. An Iraqi translator with the unit kept
pushing Jaff against the floor of the Strycker and kept calling him a
terrorist. Jaff pleaded with him to listen, told him to look at his
credentials in his breast pocket and check his cell phone where he
could find the names of Martin Smith and Marcela Gaviria, both his
producers at FRONTLINE. The Army translator insisted that Jaff was a
bad guy and told the unit that “he was filming for the bad guys.
He’s a fucking terrorist.” He was rough-handled for several minutes
and after awhile, one of the American soldiers asked him where he
lived. Jaff told him he lived in New York City on the Upper West
Side. The soldier asked him what the area code of New York was, what
subways ran through the city and what the zip code was where he lived.
Jaff answered all the questions correctly. Jaff asked if he could
sit down repeatedly and was told “You fucking stay put you fucking
journalist.” The soldiers then tried to figure out how to turn on the
camera to look at the footage Jaff had shot. Jaff volunteered to
explain and asked for the blindfold to be taken off but his request
was denied. After some time, the soldiers figured out how to turn on
the camera and then asked Jaff how to rewind the tape. They found
four minutes of shot footage from the day before. A Mehdi official in
an office, surrounded by posters of Moqtada Sadr, called up Kufa and
talked with a fellow member of the Mehdi Army and negotiated an
interview with Moqtada Sadr. The tape then shows footage of a burning
car and then the audio of Jaff being arrested by the unit. After
nearly a full hour of being interrogated Jaff’s plastic handcuffs were
taken off and his blindfold removed. He was dropped off in the same
neighborhood as the one he was picked up at, but on a different
street. Jaff was given back the camera, but the soldiers kept the
tape. We are not sure if the camera works yet. One soldier asked if
he would “tattle tale.” Jaff didn’t answer. He then sought refuge
in a nearby store and called his relatives who picked him up. The
relatives had trailed the Strycker that had Jaff for nearly an hour.
They had called a fixer at the New York Times Baghdad office to report
Jaff’s detention and the fixer had told them to follow the convoy in
case Jaff was taken to Abu Ghraib.