PARIS, Aug 19: In a letter to US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld, international journalists’ rights organisation Reporters sans frontieres (RSF) said it was “appalled and shocked” by the fatal shooting of Reuters cameraman Mazen Dana by a US soldier on Sunday in Iraq.

The RSF called for an immediate enquiry that would be “honest, rapid and designed to shed full light on this tragedy, not whitewash the US army.”

RSF secretary-general Robert Menard said that US troops had committed many blunders during the war in Iraq “but none has been the subject of an investigation worthy of the name.” The Pentagon’s so-called enquiry into the shelling of the Palestine Hotel on April 8, of which only the unconvincing conclusions have been made public, “shamelessly exonerates the US army,” he said.

“In isolated cases, we have seen soldiers being hostile to news media personnel,” Menard continued. “Such behaviour is unacceptable and must be punished. It is essential that clear instructions and calls for caution are given to soldiers in the field so that the freedom of movement and work of journalists is respected in Iraq.”

BANGLADESH: RSF said it wrote to Bangladeshi Prime Minister Khaleda Zia on Tuesday, calling for the immediate release of journalist Hiramon Mondol, who was viciously beaten by police in Khulna on Aug 8, and has since been held in the Khulna prison infirmary, and the dismissal of the patently false charge of theft brought against him.

The local correspondent of the daily Dainik Bartaman, Mondol was attacked by a group of police officers which included members of a special unit assigned to combat organised crime and extreme-left activists. They beat him with batons, hockey sticks and rifles and took him, bound hand and foot, to Paikgacha camp before transferring him to the prison infirmary.