Guardian Story

British reporter kidnapped in Basra
Michael Howard
guardian.co.uk,
Tuesday February 12 2008

Iraqi security forces in Basra were today engaged in "an intensive hunt" for a British reporter and his Iraqi interpreter who were abducted from their hotel by a gang of masked and armed men.
Basra police said the two men, who work for the US television network CBS, were seized at Basra's Sultan Palace hotel on Sunday morning. Police sources said one man had been detained on suspicion of involvement in the raid.
CBS yesterday confirmed that two of its journalists were missing, but it did not name them. The network appealed to other media "not to speculate on the identities of those involved" until more information was available.
In London, a foreign office spokesperson said she was aware that western citizens had been reported missing in Iraq, and that the FCO was looking into the matter "with some urgency".
The news of the kidnapping came as the bullet-riddled body of a young Iraqi journalist was found on the streets of Baghdad, two days after he had left his office to buy supplies.
Hisham Michwit Hamdan, 27, had not been seen by colleagues since leaving the offices of the Young Journalists League, an independent media watchdog, to buy stationery at a market in the Bab al-Mudham area.
The murder and the kidnapping were a reminder that despite recent security gains, Iraq remains the world's most dangerous country for journalists.
According to a report by Reporters Without Borders, 47 journalists lost their lives in Iraq in 2007, up from 41 in 2006, while 25 were kidnapped. The vast majority of the victims were Iraqi citizens. The only foreign journalist killed last year was a Russian photographer who was killed in a bomb blast north of Baghdad. Most of the hostages were freed unharmed, Reporters Without Borders said.
If the accounts of the latest kidnapping in Basra are confirmed, it would be the first abduction of a western reporter in Iraq since Jill Carroll of the Christian Science Monitor was seized and her driver killed in western Baghdad in January 2006. She was released two months later.
The British army transferred security in Basra to Iraqi forces in December. Since then, Iraq's second largest city has been generally quieter, but there are occasional eruptions of violence as Shia political parties, militias and criminal gangs continue to battle each other for dominance.
The Committee to Protect Journalists said three journalists had been abducted in Basra since 2004. Freelancer James Brandon was released, but Steven Vincent, also a freelancer, and Fakher Haider of the New York Times were later found shot dead.
The Basra office of the radical Shia cleric Muqtada al Sadr today appealed for the release of the CBS staff. "We condemn such events and we call on security forces to help in their release," an official said.