The killing earlier this month of Sardasht Osman, a final-year English student at Salaheddin University in Arbil, the capital of the Kurdish region, provoked widespread consternation and demands for the culprits to be caught.

"We are continuing to demonstrate to demand an inquiry to discover the murderers," Kamal Rauf, editor of the Kurdish newspaper Hawlati and one of the protesters in Sulaimaniyah, 270 kilometres (168 miles) north of Baghdad, told AFP.

Osman, 22, worked as a journalist for the magazine Ashtiname ("Letter for Peace" in Kurdish) and as an English-Kurdish translator. His body was found 24 hours after he was kidnapped on his university campus on May 4.

Rauf accused the Kurdistan Democratic Party, of regional president Massud Barzani, of involvement in the murder of Osman, who had criticised the KDP.

"We want the creation of an independent commission to look into the murder," Rauf said.

"We also want the resignation of the minister of the interior (for the Kurdish region) Karim Sanjari, and those responsible for security in Arbil."

The Kurdish president has condemned the journalist's killing and, in an official statement, said an "investigation is in progress."

In one of Osman's most critical articles, titled: "I love the daughter of Massud Barzani," published in the Kurdistan Post, the murdered journalist used an imaginary dream to condemn the alleged corruption of Kurdish leaders.

"When I become the son-in-law of Barzani, the wedding night will be in Paris and we will visit the palace of our uncle for several days in the United States," he said.

"We will leave our poor neighbourhood in Arbil to go to live in beautiful quarters and I will be protected at night by American sniffer dogs and Israeli guards," drawing a provocative contrast between Barzani's opulent lifestyle and that of ordinary Kurds.

In its Press Freedom 2009 index published in October, Reporters Without Borders ranked Iraq at a lowly 145th place for media freedom out of 175 countries.

And according to the Committee to Protect Journalists' 2010 "Impunity Index" published last month, Iraq has the worst record of any country in the world when it comes to solving murders of reporters.