http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=540&ncid=736&e=9&u=/ap/20040823/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_missing_journalist
Freed U.S. Reporter Hopes to Stay in Iraq
Mon Aug 23, 1:31 PM ET
By TODD PITMAN, Associated Press Writer
BAGHDAD, Iraq - U.S. journalist Micah Garen, freed after nine days of being held by kidnappers, said he hoped to stay in Iraq to continue working on a documentary project about the looting of archaeological sites.
"This experience hasn't made me want to leave at all," Garen said in an interview with Associated Press Television News in the southern city of Nasiriyah late Sunday, hours after he was freed.
The 36-year-old New Yorker was kidnapped Aug. 13 in Nasiriyah along with his Iraqi translator, Amir Doushi. The two were released Sunday after representatives of rebel Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr intervened.
Garen, apparently in good health, spoke as he sat drinking soda on a couch next to Sheik Aws al-Khafaji, an al-Sadr aide in Nasiriyah.
Al-Sadr's militiamen have been battling U.S. troops in the holy city of Najaf since Aug. 5, and the intervention to free an American hostage may have been an attempt to fend off U.S. attempts to paint al-Sadr's movement as a band of criminals. The firebrand cleric is fiercely opposed to a U.S. presence in Iraq. He has condemned past kidnappings of foreigners as un-Islamic and his aides have intervened previously to win the release of a few other hostages, including a British journalist.
Al-Khafaji told The Associated Press on Monday that his office got involved only after Garen's sister, Eva Garen, appeared on Arab satellite channels asking it to help.
"We got her message through satellite channels," he said. "When he (al-Sadr) was asked to intervene we did."
However, Eva Garen's message on the Al-Jazeera television station was a direct appeal to the kidnappers to release her brother, not to al-Sadr to mediate the crisis. And al-Khafaji told AP on Thursday afternoon ? hours before Eva Garen's message was broadcast late that night ? that his office had been trying for nearly a week to win the journalist's freedom.
"I'd like to thank the Sadr office for its work in helping secure my release and I'm very happy to be free," Garen told APTN. "I'm very happy that this is resolved."
"I feel like I have lots and lots of friends here and I hope that I can continue to work here," Garen said.
Police on Monday were keeping reporters away from Garen's family home in New Haven., Conn.. A woman who answered the telephone there Monday afternoon said that the family didn't plan to make any statements until Garen returned from Iraq.
The woman, who identified herself as a family member, wouldn't comment on Garen's plans to remain in Iraq or whether the family had intervened in the case.
Asked how Garen was treated, she said, "Very well, from what we understand. He looks well."
Al-Sadr officials delivered Garen to an Italian military base in Nasiriyah late Sunday. He was subsequently handed over to U.S. authorities, an Italian official said on condition of anonymity.
On Thursday, the kidnappers released a video of Garen surrounded by armed, masked gunmen and threatened to kill him if U.S. troops did not leave Najaf in 48 hours.
Garen and his translator were abducted in a Nasiriyah market by two armed men in civilian clothes, police said. Speaking to the Arab television station Al-Jazeera on Sunday, Garen said he was taking pictures in the market when a misunderstanding happened with people who did not approve.
Al-Khafaji said the kidnappers had mistakenly thought Garen was working for U.S. intelligence services.
"The kidnappers listened to the call that we made during Friday prayers, and they contacted us and we asked them to bring him to (al-Sadr's) office and promised that no one would pursue them," al-Khafaji said Sunday night.
Al-Khafaji said Garen was in "very good condition."
Garen was working on a story about the looting of archaeological sites in Iraq when he was abducted, said his fiancee, Marie-Helene Carleton.
Garen works for Four Corners media, identified on its Web site as a "documentary organization."
He has taken photographs as a stringer for The Associated Press and had a story published in The New York Times. His photographs also have appeared in U.S. News & World Report.
Scores of foreigners have been kidnapped in recent months by insurgents and criminal gangs seeking to extort ransom or with the political motive of trying to force foreign troops and companies to leave the country.
Two French journalists are still missing in Iraq. Christian Chesnot of Radio France-Internationale, or RFI, and Georges Malbrunot of Le Figaro newspaper and RTL radio, have not been in touch with their news organizations since Thursday, a day before they apparently intended to head to Najaf.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Herve Ladsous said Monday that French officials were still trying to locate them.
Also missing ? since Thursday ? is Enzo Baldoni, an Italian journalist who went to Iraq freelancing for the news magazine Diario and was also heading to Najaf.