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17 Arab journalists honoured for ‘groundbreaking investigations’

By JT - Dec 07,2015 - Last updated at Dec 07,2015

AMMAN — Seventeen winners of the 2015 Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism (ARIJ) Prize for best investigations in print and video formats were announced Sunday.

The winning investigations covered topics such as corruption, drug dealing, abuse of illegal migrants, and police brutality in the region, according to an ARIJ statement released Monday.

The prizes were presented at a dinner to mark the end of the eighth Forum for Arab Investigative Journalists, organised by ARIJ.

Walid Batrawi, head of the 2015 ARIJ Jury Committee, said this year’s selection process was challenging, according to the ARIJ statement.

“The nominations we looked at were cutting-edge and of very high professional calibre. The differences were sometimes less than 0.010 per cent but at the end we had to distinguish some against others,” he was quoted as saying, adding that visual proof to support journalists’ hypotheses was a key differentiator for film entries.

Riad Kobeissi of Lebanon’s Al Jadeed TV won first prize in the long-form film category for his investigation of meter manipulation by companies selling diesel to hospitals and households, inflicting thousands of dollars in losses on consumers, the statement said.

Egyptian freelancer Ahmad Soleiman won second prize for his investigation of the environmental impact of the unlicensed charcoal industry in Aghour Al Ward, while Jordanian reporting team Musab Shawabkeh and Hanan Khandagji took third prize for their film about centres selling unapproved therapies for autistic children.

In the short film category, the winning entry was Sameh Laboudi’s “Eagle Stamp”, which documented manipulation of birth and death certificates by local health officials in Egypt.

Palestinian duo Karim Asakreh and Bassam Elroumi came second with their report on “Hydro”, a popular new drug marketed to Palestinians, especially children and university students.

Third-placed “Caravan”, by Yunis Al Bayati from Iraq, exposed how the governor of Diyala awarded contracts to import caravans to house citizens displaced by Daesh to companies connected with his family, resulting in wasteful spending and inferior caravans.

In the print category, first prize went to Ali Salem for his two-year investigation “Yemen: African Immigrants’ Graveyard”, about gangs detaining for ransom illegal immigrants from Africa attempting to enter Saudi Arabia, the statement said.

Second place was shared by a journalist writing under the alias Sami Shahrour and Egypt’s Saadah Abdulqader for their work on, respectively, random kidnappings by regime forces in Syria and illegal imports of walkie-talkies in Egypt.

Egypt’s Seham Al Basha and Ahmad Jamal Eddine won third prize in the print category for their report on international mediation centres selling certificates bearing diplomatic and arbitration titles similar to those used in Egypt in violation of the law.

The jury also awarded “certificates of appreciation” to three journalists in the short film category — Osama Deeb (Egypt), Humam Mujahed (Egypt), and Assad Zalzali (Iraq) — and one in the print category, Mohammad Komani (Yemen).

Two special ARIJ Board Prizes, one for uncovering human rights violations and the other for exposing corruption and organised crime, went to Tunisian freelancer Meriam Nasri and a Syrian journalist writing under the alias Ibrahim Saleh, respectively.

Nasri’s film, shown on Al Jazeera English’s People & Power investigations programme in September, demonstrated the continuation of police brutality and torture after the 2011 revolution in Tunisia.

Saleh’s investigation “The Secret Empire of Assad’s Maternal Family” was based on leaked files from the bank HSBC, received under ARIJ’s cooperation agreement with the International Consortium for Investigative Journalists.

 

The three-day forum, which attracted over 300 Arab and international investigative journalists and media professionals, was held this year under the theme “Arab Media: Survival under Censorship”.

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