Freed kidnap journalist wants to stay in Iraq
Hours after being freed by kidnappers who threatened to kill him, US journalist Micah Garen said he hoped to stay in Iraq to continue working on a documentary project he had started about the looting of archaeological sites.
“This experience hasn’t made me want to leave at all,” Garen said in the southern city of Nasiriyah.
The 36-year-old New Yorker was kidnapped on August 13 in Nasiriyah along with his Iraqi translator, Amir Doushi. The two were released after representatives of rebel Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr intervened.
US Embassy spokesman Bob Callahan said Garen “remains in Iraq but I cannot tell you where”.
TV footage showed Garen in apparently good health, drinking soda on a couch next to Sheik Aws al-Khafaji, an al-Sadr aide in Nasiriyah.
“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 said. “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.
Garen said he had been taking pictures with a small camera when a misunderstanding happened with people who did not approve. He did not elaborate.
Al-Khafaji said the kidnappers had mistakenly thought Garen was working for US intelligence services.
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 organisation working in still photography, video and print media”.
