21/10/2005

Guardian journalist released in Iraq unharmed

Irish-born journalist Rory Carroll has been released unharmed after being kidnapped in Baghdad earlier this week.

The Guardian confirmed that the 33-year-old journalist was released on Thursday night after being held for 36 hours.

Mr Carroll, Baghdad correspondent for ‘The Guardian’ newspaper, had been conducting an interview with a victim of former dictator Saddam Hussein’s regime in a house in the Iraqi capital on Wednesday. When he left the dwelling, accompanied by two drivers and a translator, Mr Carroll was confronted by gunmen and was bundled into a car, along with one of the drivers who was released shortly afterwards.

Speaking from the Baghdad’s Green Zone, Mr Carroll told the paper that he was “absolutely fine” and had been treated well, apart from “a bit of initial roughness” when he was first taken.

Mr Carroll described his kidnappers as “Shia opportunists”. He told the Guardian that he had been handcuffed and held in a room under the ground floor of a house.

He said that the gunmen told him that he would be used as a “bargaining chip” in exchange for followers of the radical Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, and feared that he might be handed over to Sunni or Islamic groups.

However, Mr Carroll said he was released after one of his captors received a call on a mobile phone.

Alan Rusbridger, the editor of the Guardian, said he was “overjoyed” that Mr Carroll had been safely released. He said: “We’d like to thank all those in London, Dublin and Iraq who played a role in freeing him.”

(KMcA/SP)

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