August IWMFWire
Elizabeth Neuffer Dies in Iraq

Courage Award winner was known for her human rights reporting

Elizabeth Neuffer, who won a Courage in Journalism Award in 1998 for her work reporting on the world’s hotspots, was killed on May 9 while on assignment covering the aftermath of the war in Iraq. The Boston Globe foreign correspondent died when a car in which she was riding crashed into a guardrail near the town of Samarra. Her translator, Waleed Khalifa Hassan Al-Dulami, was also killed. Neuffer was returning from an overnight trip to Tikrit, where she had gone to report on efforts to dismantle the Baath Party apparatus that had helped enforce Sadaam Hussein’s government, reported the Globe. Her article was to have been published the following Sunday.

Neuffer began her journalism career in London, writing freelance articles for The New York Times. She later joined the Globe, first covering federal court in Boston. In 1994 she became the Globe’s European correspondent based in Berlin. Neuffer also covered the atrocities in Bosnia and Rwanda for a 10-part series that grew into a book published by Picador last year, The Keys to My Neighbor’s House: Seeking Justice in Bosnia and Rwanda.

Accepting her Courage in Journalism Award, Neuffer said, “The truth may be hazardous to those who tell it, but truth is not dangerous, disinformation is. As I saw in Bosnia and Rwanda, it is propaganda that fans the flames of hatred.”