Shelly Kittleson: Kidnapped American journalist built respected career reporting across Middle East

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American journalist Shelly Kittleson, who was suddenly kidnapped in Iray’s capital, Baghdad, often worked without formal assignments from editors and on a shoestring budget, according to former colleagues.

Kittleson, 49, had lived abroad for years, using Rome as her base for a time and building a respected freelance journalism career across the Middle East.

The journalist was taken from a street in the capital 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.

“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.

Friends and fellow journalists describe Kittleson as a determined, gutsy reporter who had 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.

Shelly Kittleson, 49, had lived abroad for years, using Rome as her base for a time and building a respected journalism career across the Middle East (Associated Press)

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

Her independence meant she often worked 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 was kind and spiritual, friends say, and had embraced Islam.

She was a vegetarian, a lifestyle her close Iraqi friends said was often difficult to accommodate in meat-heavy Middle Eastern countries, and she was frequently teased for her backbreaking bags. She distrusted leaving them 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.

Shelly Kittleson had been staying in a hotel in Baghdad for a few days before she was captured (Shelly Kittleson)

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.

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.

The street corner in central Baghdad's Saadoun Street where US journalist Shelly Kittleson was kidnapped in central Baghdad, Iraq — The street corner in central Baghdad’s Saadoun Street where US journalist Shelly Kittleson was kidnapped in central Baghdad, Iraq (Associated Press)

“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 last story with Il Foglio on Monday, March 31. The story focused on the effect of the Iran war on Iraq’s Kurdish region.