Rory Carroll, the Irish journalist who was kidnapped in the Shia Muslim slums of Sadr City on Wednesday, was freed last night after 36 hours as a hostage.
Mr Carroll (33), the Iraq correspondent for the Guardian, telephoned his father Joe around 8pm at his home at Blackrock, Co Dublin, last night to tell him the news.
"I'm absolutely fine, both physically and psychologically. I've been well treated, apart from a bit of initial roughness when they first took me," the Guardian quoted him as saying.
Mr Carroll spoke from the office of Ahmed Chalabi, the deputy prime minister of Iraq, inside the US-protected Green Zone, where he drank a beer in celebration. The Iraqi government was to hand him over to the British ambassador last night and he is expected to fly out of Baghdad today, possibly to Dublin. Because Ireland has no permanent mission in Baghdad, the British embassy represented Ireland during his short captivity.
Mr Carroll said he wants to go on reporting on Iraq. "The next move is unclear, but I would like to report on Iraq in the future," he told Reuters.
The journalist was held in a dark basement cell for more than 24 hours when one of his jailers received a call on his mobile phone. "I heard a captor in the corridor answer his mobile," he said. "He laughed and sounded relieved, and opened the bolted door and said, 'I am going to let you go'. He put me in the boot of his car and drove me alone and dropped me in the middle of Baghdad."
At the time of his kidnapping on Wednesday afternoon, Mr Carroll said: "They took me in a car and after 20 minutes switched me to the boot of another one. They stripped me of all my own clothes and dressed me in old clothes." He was handcuffed and held in a dark basement for 36 hours. "I had only had a rug and pillow. They allowed me out twice for food," he said.
"I don't know who took me," Mr Carroll said. "I'm fine. I was treated reasonably well. I spent the last 36 hours in the dark. I was released into the hands of Dr Chalabi."
It appears likely that Mr Carroll was abducted by a criminal gang which came under pressure from the Sadr movement that controls the slum where he had gone to report a story about a Shia Muslim family watching Saddam Hussein's trial on television.
Mr Carroll telephoned his parents last night from Baghdad with a beer in his hand. He told his father Joe, a former Washington correspondent for The Irish Times, and mother Kathy that he was well and safe and in a safe compound after being transported from the cell.
A statement was released last night by his parents and sister, Karina: "Kathy, Joe and Karina are delighted at the news of Rory's release. It was a tremendous joy to speak to him minutes after his release and to know that he is safe and well. We would like to thank everybody who contributed to this happy ending."
At the Guardian office, a two bedroom flat in the Hamra Hotel which Mr Carroll shared with other staff, his friends had prepared a rucksack holding his Irish passport and other essential belongings. As the news spread among the small foreign press corps, journalists gravitated to the office. They were not able to join Mr Carroll in the Green Zone because the 10pm curfew had already passed, and they risked being shot if they left the Hamra compound.
Taoiseach Bertie Ahern last night led the Government's welcome for the release of the journalist.
"I welcome the good news of his safe release. I am delighted for his family, friends and colleagues. I am delighted that he is free again, within 24 hours of his capture."
Foreign Affairs Minister Dermot Ahern said "a number of friends and partners" had helped in the release. "The Government is deeply grateful to all who helped achieve this happy outcome. I am utterly delighted for Rory Carroll and his family."
The Guardian said "his release came after intense diplomatic pressure" and that "he attributed his freedom to the intervention of the Iraqi government". Muslim, Catholic and Protestant clerics, and the Irish and British governments, had called for his release.
Sheikh Moqtada al-Sadr, a radical cleric, is now allied with Mr Chalabi, a wealthy secular Shia who was convicted of bank fraud in Jordan. Mr Chalabi was long employed by the CIA and then the Pentagon, and did more than any other Iraqi to encourage the Bush administration to invade Iraq. He appears to have been the intermediary who negotiated Mr Carroll's release.