Al-Sadr calls for release of kidnapped journalist
Top aides to firebrand Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr called on kidnappers to immediately free a western journalist they had threatened to kill unless US forces withdrew from the holy city of Najaf.
The pan-Arab television station Al-Jazeera reported that a militant group calling itself the Martyrs Brigade had abducted US journalist Micah Garen and would kill him within 48 hours if their demands were not met.
Garen and his Iraqi translator, Amir Doushi, were walking through a market in the southern city of Nasiriyah on August 13 when two armed men in civilian clothes seized them.
In the video, a man resembling the 36-year-old Garen kneels in front of five masked militants armed with rifles and rocket-propelled grenade launchers.
The hostage looked down at the ground throughout the videotape, the authenticity of which could not be determined.
The sound on the video was inaudible, but the announcer said the kidnappers threatened to kill Garen within two days if US forces did not leave Najaf, where they have been fighting al-Sadr’s militants for two weeks.
Sheik Aws al-Khafaji, a top al-Sadr aide, said the rebel cleric’s militia was against kidnapping, “especially this journalist who rendered Nasiriyah great service”.
“We call upon the kidnappers to set him free and tried many times to contact many groups to help us find out about his condition,” al-Khafaji said in Nasiriyah.
“Since the day he was kidnapped, we have been calling upon the kidnappers through mosque prayers to free him,” he said.
Another al-Sadr aide in the southern city of Basra, Sheikh Asaad al-Basri, also condemned Garen’s abduction. He said al-Sadr officials were trying to reach the kidnappers “so that we could mediate to free him”.
Garen’s sister Eva also appealed to the kidnappers in a phone interview with Al-Jazeera today, saying that she hoped they would free her brother after hearing the request from al-Sadr’s aides.
Garen, of New York, was working on a story about the looting of archaeological sites in Iraq when he was abducted, said his fiancee, Marie-Helene Carleton.
