Fiancee pleads: Let journo go
17/08/2004 07:04  - (SA)  

Want to know more? Answerit can help.

Another journo kidnapped Journo faced 'mock executions' Sadr aides: Release journo Videotape: We will kill journo Iraq: British journo kidnapped BBC journos held at gunpoint Iraqi police arrest journos Journo told to 'shove it'

Paris - The fiancée of an American journalist abducted in Iraq has appealed to his kidnappers to free him, the media rights watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said on Monday.

"I appeal to his kidnappers to release Micah Garen, who was only doing his job as a journalist by reporting in an independent manner the unfolding of the events in Iraq and in working to safeguard Iraq's archaeological heritage," Marie-Helene Carleton, Garen's fiancée and collaborator, said.

"We were making a documentary film together on the cultural history and threatened archaeological sites in war zones in the hope that they would soon get protection," she told the Paris-based rights group.

Had clashed with Italian police

Garen, 36, 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.

He was abducted on Saturday in the southern Iraqi city of Nasiriyah by unknown assailants as he was walking in the city centre, the city's deputy governor Adnan al-Sharifi said on Monday.

There has been no news of him since and no one has claimed responsibility for his kidnapping.

Websites show Garen to have been active in Iraq for several months, producing work focusing on the threat to archaeological sites since the fall of Saddam Hussein but also covering other current events.

The head of archaeological services in Nasiriyah, Abdul Amir al-Hamdani, said Garen had been living for the past few days in a hotel in the city while preparing a project to protect archaeological sites in the area.

Hamdani said Garen 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.

What is this? Yahoo Digg Del.icio.us Facebook Brought to you by OUTsurance Car Insurance
	News24 Headlines on your Facebook profile		News24 on mobile