Marwan Speaks about Kidnapping

Aside from death, abduction of a correspondent is just about the last thing anyone involved in a media organization wants to hear. On July 23rd, that is exactly what happened. Kidnappings have now become routine in Baghdad. Luckily Marwan was released approximately three days after his kidnapping.

Unfortunately when Marwan was first kidnapped, we could not tell his story, due to his parent’s request and fear for his safety. Today we bring you the first segment of a two part interview about his kidnapping and detention by one of Baghdad’s militias, apparently the Mahdi Army.

Marwan was kidnapped while shooting b-roll, that is supporting footage depicting life around Baghdad. It is an unfortunate reality that shooting footage on the streets of Baghdad is an incredibly dangerous prospect. Marwan had only been working for one week when he was kidnapped, he had not even received his ID card.

archival reference: https://web.archive.org/web/20110423082523/http://aliveinbaghdad.org/2006/10/20/marwan-speaks-about-his-kidnapping/

Editor's Note: The concept for Alive-in/ began in 2005 with the launch of Alive in Baghdad. Many of the stories produced by our team of Iraqi reporters were taken offline with the closure of blip.tv.

In remembrance of the 20th anniversary of the United States war against Iraq, we are republishing as much of Alive in Baghdad's original content as possible here on Alive-in/. Each story has been given its original date so that these posts don't overwhelm our current stories, and tagged as relevant.