French-American Journalist Said Kidnapped

[Nambe]

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP)

A French-American journalist was kidnapped Monday in the southern Iraqi city of Nasiriyah, Al-Jazeera television reported.

The journalist was reportedly a citizen of both France and the United States, but was not otherwise identified. No other details were immediately available.

The report could not immediately be authenticated. A spokesman for Italian forces deployed in Nasiriyah, about 200 miles southeast of Baghdad, could not confirm it, and . a spokesman for the U.S Embassy in Baghdad, Bob Callahan, said he had not heard of the kidnapping and had no information. ..

Ride Don’t Drive * * It’s Global Cool

[Webster Green]

1. If I was in his shoes I would be speaking French about now.....

No speak English!

[Dover]

2. ....no one is more hostile to reporters in Iraq than our own or out puppet

government. So that is the first place I'd look. They have banned reporters in Najaf, I believe. Perhaps this is what happens to persistent news hounds....

[leftchick]

3. You are on to something there Dover... check this out...

From AFP:US journalist kidnapped in southern Iraq: official


http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&ncid=1504&e=4&u=/afp/20040816/pl_afp/iraq_us_hostage_040816085932

<snip>

"The journalist Micah Garen was walking in the market in the town centre when he was kidnapped by unknown men," Sharifi said Monday.


Garen is the founder and head of Four Corners Media, a company specialising in film, photo and written documentaries with offices in New York and Colorado, according to its website.

<snip>
Hamdani said he had fallen foul of Italian troops in the area after accusing them of killing civilians, including a pregnant woman, in a clash 10 days before with Shiite militia.


"He took photographs of an ambulance which had been machine-gunned ... and sent them to the government in Rome, saying that the Italian forces had killed a family and not terrorists," he added.


As a result, the Italians had banned him from their base and he had moved into the city, Hamdani said.

[Dover]

4. Wow...good catch. I'm afraid they kill opportunistically & clean house

under the guise of "kidnapping" a lot. It's the wild west...a killing field.

Besides, the Iraqi resistance has nothing to gain by kidnapping reporters, as they surely know that media in Iraq are considered hostile to the coalition cause, and that they are not effective bargaining chips as a result.

[Dover]

5. "The Iraqi government decided yesterday to treat the media as the enemy"

Police fire at reporters as US tanks roll up to shrine
By Adrian Blomfield in Najaf
(Filed: 16/08/2004)


The bullet that whistled through the lobby of the Sea Hotel in Najaf yesterday, embedding shards of glass into a foreign reporter's cheek before lodging itself in an air-conditioning unit, carried an unmistakeable message: "Get out."

Journalists working in Iraq have long lived with the danger of being targeted by insurgents fighting US-led forces and their Iraqi allies.

But in Najaf the roles have been abruptly reversed. Now the Iraqi police threaten journalists, and the insurgents welcome them.

As US marines and Iraqi security forces resumed their operation to evict insurgents from the Shrine of Ali, the holiest place in Shia Islam, the Iraqi interim government decided yesterday to treat the media as the enemy...cont'd

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/08/16/wirq216.xml&sSheet=/news/2004/08/16/ixnewstop.html