4 Journalists Freed From Iraqi Prison

NEW YORK —  Two Newsday journalists and two freelance photographers who had been missing in Iraq reached Jordan safely Tuesday after spending a week inside Baghdad’s Abu Ghraib prison, an editor at the newspaper said.

Correspondent Matthew McAllester and photographer Moises Saman called the newspaper Tuesday afternoon with the news that they were free and about to cross the Jordanian border, said Charlotte Hall, Newsday managing editor. Freelance photographers Molly Bingham and Johan Rydeng Spanner were traveling with the two newspaper journalists.

“We are fine, we are well,” McAllester told editors, adding that he and his colleague were tired from their confinement but physically sound. Saman, sounding equally relieved, told editors, “We’re in good spirits and happy to be safe and looking forward to a nice meal.”

The four journalists disappeared from their rooms at the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad on March 24, when Iraqi security agents questioned them and confiscated their belongings, including computers, notebooks, tape recorders, cell phones and other equipment.

Although details of their arrest and release are still sketchy, Anthony Marro, Newsday’s editor, earlier said he believed the journalists had been detained and interrogated over the status of their visas.

The Iraqi government made no official statement about the journalists’ detention.

“We were in Abu Ghraib prison seven or eight days, and there were no specific charges,” McAllester told reporters when he crossed the Jordanian border. “It wasn’t much fun, but we were not physically hurt and we’re very happy to be out.”

News of McAllester and Saman’s release sparked an impromptu celebration in Newsday’s newsroom. “This is the happiest day I’ve ever had at this newspaper,” Hall said. “There’s a mood of such euphoria, people were shouting and yelling, so happy.”

The newspaper had launched an intensive outreach effort to bring the missing journalists home. Hall said, “There were a train of things that probably helped, on the diplomatic front, from professional journalist organizations and from the Catholic Church.”

Noting that Saman is of Palestinian origin, she said: “His family reached out to the Palestinian Authority for help, and Newsday also reached out to them through an intermediary. There were requests made for help to the Iraqi ambassador to the United Nations, and we also made requests for help through Bishop William Murphy of Long Island and the papal nuncio in Baghdad.”

Hall said McAllester, the paper’s United Nations bureau chief, and Saman would provide more details of their confinement today. “But right now they just want a steak dinner, a bottle of wine and a hot shower,” she said.

Bingham, formerly the official photographer for Vice President Al Gore, contacted her family in Louisville, Ky., to tell them she was free. “Everybody is greatly relieved, and a tremendous amount of stress is gone,” said Stan MacDonald, a family spokesman. Bingham’s father, Barry, is a former publisher of the Louisville Courier-Journal.

Clara Bingham, a cousin of the photographer, told CNN that the “Iraqis suspected she might have been a spy. She had two satellite phones and some White House numbers in her purse. But we haven’t gotten confirmation from her yet.”