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Iraqi policemen rounded up dozens of journalists at gunpoint in a Najaf hotel and took them to police headquarters before later releasing them. Firing their guns in the air, the dozen odd policemen, some masked, stormed into the rooms of journalists in the Najaf Sea hotel and forced them into vans and a truck. An AFP correspondent, who was also forced into a van, said the police pushed and pulled many reporters at gunpoint. After a two-minute drive from the hotel, where journalists from across the world are based while covering the battle between al-Mahdi Army militiamen and US occupation forces city, the reporters were taken to the office of the police chief. " "You are brought here because I want to tell you that you never publish the truth. I speak the truth, but you never broadcast what we are." The police chief complained that reporters have been misreporting the proposed visit to Najaf by Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the revered Iraqi Shiite Muslim leader. [more

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