Hoshang Yaseen is an eighteen year old computing institute student in Kirkuk. He is also a reporter for the Zagros space channel and the reporters’ agent for to the Kurdistan Democratic Party (PDK). A Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) peshmarga shot him on Election Day and injured him.
Before the PUK peshmarga direced his pistol towards the journalist, as Hoshang told METRO, "His finger was inside a color remover liquid.” The scene could have been as normal to Hoshang as to tens of ordinary people in the Shorija Quarter where the crime was committed and the incident could have been avoided. But for Hoshang who is a journalist, the scene was a news story.
A group of people in Kurdish dress were gathering near the Halgord School in the Shorija Quarter of Kirkuk with color remover bottles in front of them erasing the finger ink after voting. The police were present while Hoshang was filming them.
Hoshang’s only crime is that he was trying to film the scene, however he received an answer by a bullet from the pistol of the unit 70 peshmarga. The bullet went vertically through his chest down to his kidney, pancreas, liver and intestines. He lost a kidney and received injuries in his spleen and lung besides a hole in his intestines.
Though the police were present at the scene, there was fighting between the crowd, the police and the attacker. The rest of the assailant’s colleagues fled but he was arrested.
The shooter is now in custody but the hands of justice have not reached his partners.
This is the first incident in Kirkuk after the murder of two journalists, Soran Mama Hama and Abdus-satar Tahir Shareef where the perpetrator was arrested. It is the first time in Kurdistan where the perpetrator was arrested at the scene at the time of committing the crime.
Now the defendant is in police custody but his colleagues who are from the same military unit according to the police are out of reach of judicial system. The Minister of the ministry of peshmaerga stated that when an arrest warrant has been issued, the investigation will be conducted with all those involved in the incident.
A delegate from the Metro visited Hoshang Yaseen find out about his condition and the details of
the attack. He left hospital to receive treatment at home after a major surgical operation.
Kirkuk now