Living tribute to blast victim

From the Echo, first published Tuesday 14th Oct 2003.

EXACTLY two years ago they had arrived at the Dorset campus full of excitement and hope for the future.

Two years later and they were back, this time to mourn the loss of one of their number whose life had been ended when a terrorist's bomb exploded.

Student friends of murdered Bournemouth University graduate Reham AlFarra congregated at the campus on Sunday to hold a memorial service and plant a rose bush in her honour.

Reham, who graduated from the campus this year, was one of 23 staff killed when a bomb ripped through the United Nation's compound in Baghdad.

Eleven of her young colleagues had travelled to Dorset from across the country to be at the special ceremony.

Twenty-nine-year-old Reham, who came from Jordan, had spent a year at Bournemouth completing a postgraduate masters in multi-media journalism thanks to a scholarship scheme with the British Council.

Her job at the UN had been her first since graduating and she had only arrived in the Iraqi capital the day before the bombing took place.

She had initially been posted to the UN in New York and her promotion to Iraq had been almost overnight.

"We all though she was in New York so when we heard about the bomb we didn't worry too much," said former classmate Hildegunn Soldal, who helped organise the memorial.

"It was several weeks after the bombing when we found out that that she had been killed. It was awful. She was a fabulous student, a league above the rest of us.

"Before coming to Bournemouth she had been a journalist in Jordan and I think she was their first female political columnist."

The UN has since renamed its annual training programme for young journalists in honour of Reham.

Phil MacGregor, senior lecturer on the MA in multi-media journalism course, said: "It was very hard for us to come to terms with losing her. She was such a nice person who had already achieved so much.

"It's tragic that she had to pay the ultimate price."

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