The Baghdad bureau chief for Reuters has left Iraq after he was threatened on Facebook and denounced by a Shi’ite paramilitary group’s satellite news channel in reaction to a Reuters report last week that detailed lynching and looting in the city of Tikrit. The threats against journalist Ned Parker began on an Iraqi Facebook page run by a group that calls itself “the Hammer” and is believed by an Iraqi security source to be linked to armed Shi’ite groups. The April 5 post and subsequent comments demanded he be expelled from Iraq. One commenter said that killing Parker was “the best way to silence him, not kick him out.” Three days later, a news show on Al-Ahd, a television station owned by Iranian-backed armed group Asaib Ahl al-Haq, broadcast a segment on Parker that included a photo of him. The segment accused the reporter and Reuters […]