Guardian's Rory Carroll FREE!

[EuroObserver]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/rorycarroll/story/0,16647,1597145,00.html

<snip>

8.30pm
Guardian journalist freed in Iraq

Staff
Thursday October 20, 2005

Rory Carroll, the 33 year-old Guardian journalist kidnapped yesterday in Baghdad, was freed tonight.

The news of his freedom came in a telephone call from Carroll to his parents, Jo and Kate, at their home in Dublin. His father Jo said: "He told me that he had been released, that he was perfectly OK and in an Iraqi government compound having a beer.

"He just said 'I am safe and well and I have all my limbs on. I was in my cell and representatives of the Iraqi government came for me, they had a government car waiting. I have been in Baghdad all the time'."

</snip>

[leftofcool]

1. excellent news!!!!!!! eom

[tk2kewl]

2. Nice!

:thumbsup:

[tatertop]

Rory Gallagher, the dead musician, is free?

'bout time

[Bush_Eats_Beef]

6. Rory Gallagher, Irish blues rocker, 1948-1995

Looks like the mods are asleep.

Time to post one of my "special" Scott McClellan threads.

:evilgrin:

[tatertop]

8. Hell yes. I love Rory!

I didn't realize he died quite so young.
It was the a-l-c-o-h-o-l combined with
clinical depression.

[Bush_Eats_Beef]

9. He died shortly after an unsuccessful liver transplant...

...he just went down, down, down...gradually.

Sad.

:toast:

[tatertop]

17. They made him drink 100% alcohol

That bartender... wouldn't give him no water at all!

He called the tour as the opening act for Blue Oyster Cult a 'soul destroying experience.'
I think it may have had something to do with the
screaming diz-busters.

[MnFats]

11. Traveling through Oakland, Calif. in about 1979..

...my wife and I came across a biker bar that had a banner announcing rory gallagher was to play there that night. Alrady the sidewalk was filling up with roughass looking guys on harleys, the hell's angels and some affiliates....I wanted to go in and hear him, but my wife was against it. I conceded and we didn't go. the truth is, it seemed like the best decision at the time. she didn't have to talk me into crossing the bay into S.F.
always figured i'd have a chance to see him later in a safer venue. But noooooo.

[EuroObserver]

13. Sorry, yeah, crossed-wires (corrected).

Good man himself the Gallagher, of course! :toast:

Slainte.

[mod mom]

3. Bet that is the best beer he ever had and the best call his parent ever

received! GREAT News!!

[progressivebydesign]

4. In a cell in baghdad? Was he kidnapped by police?

This makes no sense.

[muriel_volestrangler]

20. A distinct change in wording from the initial report

The Guardian story in the OP:

"He just said, 'I am safe and well and I have all my limbs on. I was in my cell and representatives of the Iraqi government came for me, they had a government car waiting. I have been in Baghdad all the time.'"

Later Guardian story:

Rory Carroll, the Guardian journalist kidnapped in Baghdad on Wednesday, was freed last night. Carroll phoned the Guardian to confirm that he had been released from an underground cell.

The end came when one of his captors received a mobile phone call and unbolted the door to the cell, telling him he was free to go. "He put me in the boot of his car and drove me alone and dropped me in the middle of Baghdad," Carroll said.

Last night he was under the protection of the Iraqi government in the heavily fortified Green Zone.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1597450,00.html

[EuroObserver]

21. Distinct change, yes. Thanks.

The original OP copied the entire Guardian text on their site I saw a couple of minutes before the time I posted: I picked it up some 15-20 minutes after they said they posted it.

I'm prepared to swear to that in any in my opinion legitimate court in the world (like here in DU, for example, where the Jury is large).

Now the story has changed.

WTF?

ed: could be just one version for the parents and another (in more detail) for the paper (&/or on first debriefing), though...

[muriel_volestrangler]

23. The text for your OP is still at its link

and The Guardian still links to both it and the later story I posted from it's Rory Carroll page.

In fact, it's the text at my link that has now been updated (the full version for the Friday newspaper, I suppose, now it's past midnight). The interesting new bit is:

"They were Shia," he said. "At one point I was told I would be used as a bargaining chip in exchange for (Shia cleric Moqtada) al-Sadr people taken in Basra. My fear was that I would be sold on to the Sunni or Islamist groups."

[EuroObserver]

28. Ok then. Thanks for tracking this. n/t

[EuroObserver]

29. Mmm. Interesting. That bit of text didn't appear printed

in the 'International Edition' of The Guardian I bought today Friday here in Barcelona.

Then again, the FT's bombshell on the Cheney cabal didn't appear in the 'European Edition' of the FT yesterday (I didn't buy the FT today) either. The Guardian did however pick it up, in a low-key way, today.

The Guardian, yesterday, had a whole page (minus the ads) on bombs in Iran (UK blamed), though...

[texpatriot2004]

5. Yeah! Glad to hear this great news about Rory Carroll. nm

[politicaholic]

7. Fantastic news!

I was worried about him when I read that story. I love the Guardian.

[Spinzonner]

10. Um, the Iraqii government serves beer ?

that doesn't sound very Islamic.

[MnFats]

14. he was probably in the green zone, where supposedly..

...like Alice's restaurant, you can get anything you want. Hotels also cater to western interests.

[Kipling]

12. Good.

Carry on the good work.

[GrumpyGreg]

15. This entire thing is weird! 15 minutes of fame? n't

[Straight Shooter]

16. A wee bit of sunshine peeking through the dark cloud of Iraq. n/t

[Dancing_Dave]

18. Sounds like he was arrested by militia allied with the occupation

Just to intimidate him, to keep him from saying things they don't want the world to know.

[librechik]

19. thank god and the kind partisans of Sadr City

who found the mofos who kidnapped him and forced them to release him!

How they can continue to be so kind to us after all we've done to them is amazing.

[EuroObserver]

22. Well, Rory's an Irishman

And we know where the Guardian's coming from, what it is trying to do, (although occasionally it may appear to be too close to the BLiar) right?

[librechik]

24. yeah, that's right--everybody loves the Irish (me too!)

cept the Brits. I'm just saying, he was a Westerner, and it could have been so much worse.

I get physically ill when i think about everything we have done to the Iraqis. God bless them.

[cal04]

25. updated story in tomorrow's Guardian

Carroll phoned the Guardian to confirm that his captors, whom he described as Shia opportunists, had released him into the hands of the Iraqi government.
The end came when one of his captors received a mobile phone call and unbolted the door to the cell, telling him he was free to go. "He put me in the boot of his car and drove me alone and dropped me in the middle of Baghdad," Carroll said.

Last night he was under the protection of the Iraqi government in the heavily fortified Green Zone. "I'm sitting having a beer and I feel absolutely fine - both physically and psychologically. I've been very well treated, apart from a bit of initial roughness when they first took me," he said. Carroll, 33, who has been in Iraq for nine months, had been in Sadr City, a Shia-dominated district of Baghdad on Wednesday, interviewing a victim of Saddam Hussein. He was snatched by gunmen as he was leaving the home of the interviewee.

"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 said he had been handcuffed and held in a room beneath a family home in Baghdad for 36 hours. "It was a darkened room, a concrete passageway beneath the ground floor. I only had a rug and pillow. They allowed me out twice for food." "They were Shia," he said. "At one point I was told I would be used as a bargaining chip in exchange for al-Sadr people taken in Basra. My fear was that I would be sold on to the Sunni or Islamist groups."

Speaking about his release last night, he said: "I heard a captor in the corridor answer his mobile. He laughed and sounded relieved and opened the bolted door and said, 'I am going to let you go'." Alan Rusbridger, the editor of the Guardian, said: "We're overjoyed that Rory has been released safe and sound. We'd like to thank all those in London, Dublin and Iraq who played a role in freeing him. Both the British and Irish governments have been extremely helpful - as have many journalistic colleagues around the world and sympathetic groups and individuals in Baghdad."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1597450,00.html

[DeepModem Mom]

26. WP: Baghdad Kidnappers Free Reporter (UK Guardian's Rory Carroll)

Baghdad Kidnappers Free Reporter for British Paper
By John Ward Anderson
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, October 21, 2005; Page A19


BAGHDAD, Oct. 20 -- The Baghdad bureau chief of the British newspaper the Guardian was released unharmed late Thursday after being held by kidnappers for more than a day in a cramped basement in the capital, the newspaper reported on its Web site.

Rory Carroll, 33, who has covered Iraq for the paper for nine months, was dropped off in central Baghdad after unidentified intermediaries won his release, the Web report said.

"I'm absolutely fine, both physically and psychologically," the newspaper quoted Carroll as saying. "I've been well treated, apart from a bit of initial roughness when they first took me."

Carroll, an Irish citizen, was abducted on Wednesday by armed gunmen in Sadr City, a Shiite slum in northeastern Baghdad. He had gone there to interview a family about the opening of the trial of deposed president Saddam Hussein....


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/20/AR2005102001959.html

[uppityperson]

27. Great news. Thank you. nt