British consul in Kurdistan shocked from raiding satellite channel

SULAIMANIYA / IraqiNews.com: British Consul in Kurdistan expressed on Tuesday his country’s shock over attacking and burning Nalia satellite channel in Sulaimaniya, urging the regional government to start an investigation into the incident. “The British government was shocked by raiding and burning Nalia channel in Sulaimaniya and it believes that the local government has to investigate the incident and bring perpetrators to justice,” Chris Power told reporters. Thirty masked gunmen raided Nalia, Kurdistan’s first independent TV station, on 20 February, to prevent it from covering the unrest in Sulaimaniya. The owner of the station, Shaswar Abdulwahid, says that he had received a number of threats from senior politicians in the city and was asked to stop broadcasting. Naliya had only started broadcasting on 17 February, the day that security guards opened fire on a crowd of protesters in Sulaimaniya, killing at least one person and wounding more than 33 others. SH (TP) 654