Four missing Western journalists may be still detained by Iraq authorities, friend says
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Dateline: AMMAN, Jordan A colleague of four Western journalists and another American who entered Iraq without visas at the start of the war said Tuesday he believed they were being detained by Iraqi authorities.
Nate Thayer, an award-winning freelance journalist from Washington, D.C., said Iraqi authorities arrested him and his photographer, Molly Bingham of Louisville, Kentucky, at their hotel on March 24.
"After five hours of detention and questioning, I was released, but Molly did not come out with me," Thayer told The Associated Press. "I believe she is with the others, although I did not see their detention and no one else did."
He drove out of Baghdad to Jordan last Friday with an Italian photographer who was also being expelled.
"We believe they were detained by the Iraqi security forces, who believe they are something other than what they are," Thayer said. "We want to correct this misunderstanding and get those people back to their homes."
In addition to Bingham, Newsday correspondent Matthew McAllester, 33, Newsday photographer Moises Saman, 29; Danish freelance photographer Johan Rydeng Spanner, and an American peace activist, Philip Latasha, are unaccounted for in Iraq.
Thayer said that he, Bingham, Spanner and Latasha entered Iraq during the first hours of the U.S.-British bombing of Iraq and claimed they were tourists because they couldn't get press visas. McAllester and Saman went on the same day but with another group, he said.
Journalists expelled from Iraq have told Newsday that security officials came last Monday to the hotel where McAllester and Saman were staying and questioned reporters. No one saw McAllester and Saman removed, but their room was empty when a friend went to check on them, Newsday reported.
Spanner's photos of damaged official buildings in Iraq were printed in Denmark's Jyllands-Posten. The newspaper said Monday that Spanner was being held by Iraqi authorities on suspicions he could be a spy.
"Johan is an independent photographer and innocent," Thayer said. "He wanted to show the world the horror of the war."