Wisconsin native journalist abducted in Baghdad after militia warning

BAGHDAD – American freelance journalist Shelly Kittleson often worked without formal assignments from editors and on a shoestring budget, taking shared taxis to lawless corners of Iraq where militia rule outweighs government control.

Journalist vanishes

What we know:

Kittleson, 49, has lived abroad for years, using Rome as her base for a time and building a respected journalism career across the Middle East. On Tuesday, she vanished after being forced into a car by two men at a busy Baghdad intersection, surveillance camera footage showed.

“She is a great reporter and always wants to go to areas where no one wants to go,” said Patrizio Nissirio, a former editor at Italian news agency ANSA, who has known Kittleson since 2011, when she worked as a translator for the agency.

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“I said to her, ‘You don’t need to be in a war zone to do good journalism,’ and she told me, ‘I think my work is worth something when I am in those areas,’” Nissirio said.

A curious reporter who often worked alone

Local perspective:

Friends and fellow journalists describe Kittleson as a determined, gutsy reporter who spent over a decade reporting from Iraq, Syria and the wider Middle East for a variety of news outlets, including Al-Monitor, a regional news site.

Deeply curious and self-directed, she often embedded herself in local communities, sometimes staying with families rather than in hotels.

Her independence meant frequently working alone, traveling long distances and carrying heavy belongings with her at all times, while operating without the backing of a larger news organization that might have offered some protection.

The Wisconsin native is kind and spiritual, friends say, and she embraced Islam.

She left Wisconsin in 1995, when she was 19, and headed first to Italy, where she went to school and worked as a nanny, according to her mother, Barb Kittleson. She spent about 10 years in Italy before eventually settling in Iraq, she added.

In recent weeks, Iraq has been caught in the crossfire of the Iran war as the only country facing strikes from both sides. Iranian-backed militias in Iraq have launched regular attacks on American facilities there since the start of the fighting.

Kittleson’s mother said she has not seen her daughter in person since 2002, but they exchanged emails a couple of times a week, including on Monday, when her daughter sent her a couple of pictures.

“She said, ‘Here’s a current picture of me,’” her mother told The Associated Press. “That’s what she does a lot of times, quickly.”

She is a vegetarian, a lifestyle her close Iraqi friends said is often difficult to accommodate in meat-heavy Middle Eastern countries. She frequently got teased for her backbreaking bags, which she was reluctant to leave behind at the modest hotel in Baghdad where she stayed.

Three Iraqi friends and acquaintances of Kittleson spoke about her on condition of anonymity, fearing reprisal from armed groups if they were publicly linked to her.

In her final conversations before the abduction, she asked colleagues and friends about transport routes between cities while continuing to seek access to do stories.

US officials warned about militia threat

Dig deeper:

Hours before she was kidnapped, Kittleson met a friend in Baghdad’s Karrada neighborhood and said she had received a warning: U.S. officials had told her a militia group intended to target her. She did not believe the threat was credible.

Kittleson had been stopped before by security forces and militias at checkpoints, Iraqi colleagues said, and had always managed to secure her release. “They will not hurt me,” she told her friend that afternoon before she was taken.

Instead, she spoke of mounting financial strain, saying she had no assignments while in Baghdad. She had long struggled financially, living a frugal existence.

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As a freelancer, she often relied on the support of Iraqi journalists.

On March 9, Kittleson was in Syria, seeking to enter Iraq at the border crossing in al-Qaim. Border police gave her a visa, but she was soon stopped by Iraqi intelligence officers, who turned her back, citing kidnapping threats, according to three different accounts from people she called that day.

Kittleson then went to Jordan and entered Iraq from there with little issue.

“She always complained of the treatment of freelance journalists, saying they are not paid enough. She was always trying to make ends meet and said she would sleep on any couch she could find, unlike the big foreign correspondents that sleep in fancy hotels,” Nissirio said.

“Her job has always been difficult, but she had a burning passion for it that I respect and appreciate.”

Kittleson published her most recent story Monday in the Italian newspaper Il Foglio. It focused on the effect of the Iran war on Iraq’s Kurdish region.

“Journalism is what she wanted to do so bad,” Kittleson’s mother said. “I wanted her to come home and not do it, but she said, ‘I’m helping people.’”