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Female Magazine Owner Shot Dead In Kuwait
KUWAIT CITY, March 20 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - A leading Kuwaiti woman journalist known as a veteran women's rights campaigner was shot dead in the streets of the Gulf Arab state on Tuesday, eyewitnesses said, reports CNN.
The woman owner and editor-in-chief of a Kuwaiti weekly magazine, who was in dispute both with her employees and the authorities, was shot dead Tuesday as she was being chauffeured to work, a security source reported.
Hedaya Sultan al-Salem, boss of the social and political weekly al-Majalis was assassinated when unidentified gunmen in a stolen golden Nissan Patrol jeep opened fire at her white Rolls-Royce near her home in a Kuwait City suburb.
Salem, in her mid-60s, who had said in the last issue of the weekly that she feared attack, was rushed to a nearby hospital where she died of her injuries.
The source told AFP that "four men carried out the attack and they have surrendered to police." The interior ministry remained silent on the attack.
"The assailants fired between three and six bullets, three of which hit Salem as she sat in the front seat of her white Rolls-Royce being driven to work. Her driver tried to resuscitate her but failed," the source added, asking not to be identified.
Kuwaiti sources quoted witnesses as saying a man wearing a traditional flowing robe (thob) got out of a 4 x 4 vehicle and fired at least six shots at Salem as her car waited in a crowded street, reports CNN.
It was not immediately clear whether the attack was politically motivated. Journalists said Salem was involved in several financial and other disputes, including some with members of her own family, CNN adds.
Police arrested the owner of the jeep, a policeman, who said he had already informed the police that his car had been stolen, the source said.
Staff at al-Majalis, a magazine that covers social and political issues, refused to comment on Salem's murder on orders of the interior ministry, which has launched an investigation.
Salem started work as a journalist in 1961, writing for several daily and weekly newspapers starting up in Kuwait, and was a long-standing and often only female board member of the influential Kuwait Journalists' Association.
In 1970, she became the first woman editor-in-chief in Kuwait when she acquired al-Majalis, which at the time was published in Lebanon.
In the latest edition of al-Majalis, which appeared on Saturday, Salem wrote an open letter to Kuwait's Emir complaining "she has been unfairly treated in her own country" after writing an article criticizing police.
She also charged that a number of her Egyptian employees fled Kuwait after stealing millions of dollars from her establishment and that the interior ministry, under pressure from the Egyptian embassy, failed to take any action.
Salem said she recently appointed Iranian guards at her magazine instead of the Egyptians and "I ask the driver to search the car ... to make sure there was no sabotage."
In a separate article in the same issue, Salem indirectly criticized Kuwaiti Bedouin tribes, who she said manned most police stations in the emirate, but failed to do their job.
Salem was involved in many court cases regarding financial matters with her employees.
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