The Irish reporter Rory Carroll has been released unharmed in Baghdad after being kidnapped in Sadr City yesterday afternoon.
Rory Carroll
Mr Carroll was held handcuffed in the cellar of what he described as a family home for 36 hours.
At approximately 8pm Irish time one of his captors received a mobile phone call after which he was unbolted and told 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," Mr Carroll has told the Guardian.
"It was a darkened room, a concrete passageway beneath the ground floor. I had only had a rug and pillow. They allowed me out twice for food.
"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'."
He was then put into the boot of a car and driven into the centre of Baghdad where he was released. Mr Carroll immediately contacted his family.
He is currently under the protection of the Iraqi government in the heavily fortified Green Zone of the city.
"He told me that he had been released, that he was perfectly OK and in an Iraqi government compound having a beer," Joe Carroll said.
"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'."
The Minister for Foreign Affairs, Dermot Ahern has welcomed Mr Carroll's release. "I am utterly delighted for Rory Carroll and his family," Mr Ahern said. "The thoughts of all of the Irish people were with them at this most difficult and anxious time.
Joe Carroll
"The Government is deeply grateful to all who helped achieve this happy outcome. In particular, we have maintained the closest contact with a number of friends and partners, whose co-operation, both in their capitals and on the ground in Baghdad, has been quite outstanding," he concluded.
"We're overjoyed that Rory has been released safe and sound," Alan Rusbridger, the editor of the Guardian said.
Mr Rusbridger expressed his thanks to "all those in London, Dublin and Iraq" who played a role in Mr Carroll's release and said that both the British and Irish governments had been "extremely helpful - as have many journalistic colleagues around the world and sympathetic groups and individuals in Baghdad."
Mr Carroll (33), who was covering the trial of Saddam Hussein for the Guardian, was taken at gunpoint in the Iraqi capital yesterday.
He had been conducting an interview in the city with a victim of Saddam's regime when gunmen confronted him as he left the house. Mr Carroll and one of his drivers were bundled into cars, but the driver was released about 20 minutes later.
It is unclear when he will return home although speaking on RTE tonight Mr Rusbridger said the journalist had told him "he was in no hurry" to leave Baghdad.
