Musa Abdul Kareem was a 24-year-old journalist reporting in the city of Sabha in Libya. He worked for Fasanea, a Sabha-based newspaper issued by Press Support and Promotion Authority, a Tripoli-based entity formed by Libya’s National Transition Council in the wake of the 2011 uprising, with the stated goal of supporting a free and independent press.

In a tweet on July 31, the Libyan Center for Freedom of the Press said that Musa’s body was found near Sabha city centre with his hands bound. The privately-owned TV station Al-Nabaa quoted Osama al-Wafi, a spokesperson for the Sabha Medical Center, as saying that Abdul Kareem’s body had 13 bullet wounds and bore signs of torture.

Amin Ahmed, a spokesperson for the independent Libyan Center for Freedom of the Press monitoring and documentation unit, told CPJ via Twitter that Abdul Kareem and his colleagues had regularly been threatened while reporting in the city, which is experiencing continued unrest. Ahmed added that Abdul Kareem co-authored an article three weeks before his death that detailed kidnappings and robberies in the city.

Authored by CPJ