Elizabeth Palmer: Could you tell us how May Chidiac is? How is her health? Is she still in hospital?

Gisele Khoury: May is still in hospital. She phoned me three days ago, and I saw her several times. She tells me she cries a lot, and she laughs a lot. She does not feel there are any moderate feelings within her - I think that's quite normal. The Lebanese inquiries are very disturbing for her. People have not fully taken into consideration her present state of mind. They're putting very stupid questions to her. She's very perturbed by the inquiries.

Elizabeth Palmer: I understand she has lost an arm and a leg - is that correct?

Gisele Khoury: Yes.

Elizabeth Palmer: Is she aware of the investigation that is going on in her own case?

Gisele Khoury: I don't know the results of the inquiry into this attempted murder. But I think people should be more sensitive. She's in the hands of psychologists, but I don't think she should be asked difficult questions, stupid questions about herself.

Elizabeth Palmer: What would help, to make sure that these two crimes, and other crimes against journalists that have occurred in Lebanon, are pursued correctly? What kind of recommendations do you have for action, either inside or outside the country, that would put pressure on the authorities to find out what happened, and punish the guilty?

Gisele Khoury: First and foremost, you have to hear what was said yesterday. There was a direct threat. We were told that news was being given in Arabic, but that it wasn't really Arabic, that it was news being produced by people who were committing an act of treason. [Reference to a speech on Nov. 10, 2005, by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.]

Why were journalists killed? Why was Samir killed? Because he was a journalist? Because he was writing articles? Because he appeared on television in exceptional circumstances? Or because he was an activist? Why May Chidiac? Was this some sort of message? We must know this in order to know how to protect ourselves.

What is being done? Nothing. I personally feel that I'm a dead woman. I died with Samir. I don't think that it's in my interests to protect myself at this stage. I'm part of the struggle. I'm a soldier in the struggle for freedom and independence of Lebanon.

Elizabeth Palmer: What would you ask from the journalists sitting here in the room watching you, many of whom head powerful corporations? What can be done to see justice in Lebanon for the people you knew and loved?

Gisele Khoury: In Lebanon, we were proud of our journalists, who were free and democratically minded before the constitution of the military regime; we were probably the only ones in Lebanon to be that way. The journalists left the country during the war. They went to London and to Paris, in order to be able to speak out.

All I can say to you is that we're fighting for a democracy in Lebanon. We can no longer backtrack. They stopped the clock for 10 or 15 years, but things cannot simply be destroyed like that. We will carry on. It's the only reason we have to go on living and fighting in such a small country. All I can say to you is that they should feel with us that without freedom and democracy in our country, we will simply be sheep following the crowd.

Nakhle El Hage (director of news and current affairs, Al Arabiya): Gisele is my colleague, and I'm really concerned about her. She lost her husband in June and four months later, her colleague and good friend May Chidiac was injured in an assassination attempt. I'd like to ask what we can all do to protect journalists in Lebanon. Many of them are really threatened; their lives are threatened. Many of them have had to leave Lebanon because there is not enough security. I'm really concerned about Gisele and I've told her that many times, but she is crazily courageous, to stay in Lebanon and to talk all the time.

We spoke about some measures like safety training, but it does not help. It does not protect journalists from being assassinated. Danny [Schechter] spoke about some measures that journalists could take - like turning their backs to a [government] minister - but who do we turn our back to in this case? It's really a dilemma, and a very difficult situation.

I'm glad to have Gisele here because apparently people in this room belong to wealthy media organisations, and people who are really threatened in Lebanon probably belong to very modest media organisations and cannot shout.

Elizabeth Palmer: What do you recommend as a solution? Have you got any ideas about what works?

Nakhle El Hage: We should campaign a lot and, as Gisele said, we should talk about an investigation. We should challenge everybody about this. Gisele has asked for an international investigation into her husband's assassination, but it hasn't happened. And I haven't heard of any media organisation or media union that supported Gisele's request.

Elizabeth Palmer: There's an interesting experiment going on now. Paul Klebnikov, who worked for Forbes magazine, was murdered in Russia last year and there has been virtually no credible investigation into his death. So a group of journalists are taking turns going in, to try and uncover what they can, and collecting enough solid information that a dossier is forming, which eventually may force the hand of the prosecutor. Obviously, if there's no political will at all to find the culprits, it won't happen. But this is another approach we haven't mentioned that may in fact, in cases like the death of Samir Qasir, prove to be fruitful.

Nakhle El Hage: Gisele mentioned a very important point, that in yesterday's speech by the Syrian president, he called some Arab media "American-influenced media" or "American media in Arab tongues." This is really an invitation to make these people suffer.

Elizabeth Palmer: To attack them, you mean?

Nakhle El Hage: Yes. So what can we, as the media, do?

Markus Boehnisch (freelance correspondent, Spain): One solution could be a PR network for the press about their problems. Just looking at Spain and the Jose Couso case, the cameraman who died in the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad - in Spain we've seen a lot of action by the media and on television about this case. But I don't how much of this went out to the international public. A network would be a great way to share information and images, to put these topics on an international platform.