The Irish journalist Rory Carroll was kidnapped yesterday by gunmen as he finished an assignment in a suburb of Baghdad. Mr Carroll has been the Iraq correspondent for The Guardian newspaper since January.
Mr Carroll (33), his driver, interpreter and two guards were stopped by a black coupé filled with gunmen as they left an appointment in the Shia Muslim slums of Sadr City. The gunmen beat the driver, grabbed Mr Carroll and drove away.
Minister for Foreign Affairs Dermot Ahern is understood to have been advised that a low-key approach is wise until more circumstances surrounding the abduction become clear. A spokesman for Mr Ahern said he was willing to do anything that would be seen as helpful, and was awaiting further information.
Government officials have also been in contact with individuals from various organisations working in Baghdad, including the British Foreign Office, as they seek to gather as many details as possible about what has taken place. Mr Ahern also spoke to the Irish ambassadors in Tehran and Cairo. Although Ireland's Ambassador in Cairo is accredited to Iraq, the Ambassador in Tehran was also consulted because Sadr City is a largely Shia neighbourhood of Iraq, and the kidnapping is believed to have been carried out by Shias.
Mr Carroll is the third Irish citizen to be kidnapped in Iraq in a year, after Kenneth Bigley and Margaret Hassan. Mrs Hassan was taken hostage a year to the day before Mr Carroll. Mr Bigley and Mrs Hassan held British as well as Irish nationality. Both are believed to have been killed by their captors.
The fact that Mr Carroll was kidnapped in a Shia Muslim area is a cause for optimism. Journalists have several times been held for short periods and freed once their captors were convinced they were not spies.
Sheikh Moqtada al-Sadr's 'Mehdi Army' militia provides whatever semblance of order exists in Sadr City, and requests for assistance in finding Mr Carroll were likely to begin with them.
Mr Carroll's father, the retired Irish Times correspondent Joe Carroll, spoke yesterday of how his son had anticipated the possibility of being abducted in Iraq.
A former Washington Correspondent for The Irish Times, he said his son had gone on a training course organised by The Guardian at which he learned how best to react in a kidnapping situation. "It occurred to him from time to time that something like this might happen, and he had thought about what he would do and what he would say," said Mr Carroll.
Rory Carroll had gone to Sadr City to watch the opening session of Saddam Hussein's trial on television with a family who had suffered under his rule. The family wanted to see Saddam "cut to pieces and thrown to the four winds", he said in a radio interview before he was kidnapped.
In the Sunni areas where Saddam is still loved, reaction to the hearing was very different. Saddam complained that he'd been woken at 2.30 in the morning to face his judges, but he nonetheless fulfilled his lawyers' promise that he would be in form for the trial. The fallen dictator challenged the court's legitimacy, refusing to identify himself, and telling the Kurdish judge Rizgar Mohammed Amin: "You know who I am. I won't answer to this so-called court . . . Who are you? What are you? I retain my constitutional rights as president of Iraq."
Saddam and seven co-defendants pleaded not guilty to charges of torture, murder and forced expulsion in connection with the killing of 148 villagers at Dujail, 60 km north of Baghdad, in 1982.
Saddam's lawyers asked for a three-month reprieve to prepare their defence. Instead, Judge Amin adjourned the trial until November 28th, citing the failure of between 30 and 40 witnesses to show up.