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Journalists feared for their lives
AMMAN, Jordan (CNN) -- Photographer Molly Bingham, missing for a week in Iraq along with three other journalists and a peace activist, said Wednesday she was happy and sad when she learned she was not the only one being taken from her hotel by Iraqi officials. Bingham, Newsday journalists Matthew McAllester and Moises Saman, Danish photographer Johan Rydeng Spanner and peace activist Philip Latasha spoke at a news conference after being freed Tuesday. They all disappeared March 25 from the Palestine Hotel, which housed many of the visiting journalists in Baghdad. Bingham said people she assumed to be Iraqi intelligence agents first took her to her room, went through all of her things and told her she wasn't allowed to move or call anyone. She said she was held in her room for about four hours before she was told by Iraqis that they had a few more questions for her and she would have to follow them. "I insisted that if they had any questions for me, they could ask me in the hotel and there was no need for me to go anywhere," Bingham told reporters. "I wasn't particularly keen to leave my hotel room at 4:45 in the morning with a bunch of men with guns." She said that when the Iraqis brought her downstairs, she saw the two journalists from Newsday, the Danish photographer and the peace activist. She said she wasn't happy that there was anyone else in her situation, but she was glad she wasn't alone. McAllester said he felt his life was in danger until he crossed the border into Jordan.
"There were sorts of scary things to suggest that," he said. McAllester told reporters that the people who held them captive made jokes about killing them. While they were in a location that was very close to coalition bombing, they feared their captors more, he said. "The artillery [was] incredibly loud, the bombs the other night were very close ... but we were a bit more concerned about being killed by our hosts," he said. Bingham agreed, "We didn't know what they were going to do with us." "Every other moment of every other day," Bingham said, they wondered if their captors were going to kill them. While the journalists were questioned for hours by Iraqi intelligence agents who apparently suspected the five might have been spies, they all maintained that they were not physically mistreated or abused. McAllester conceded that he and Saman, a photographer, may have "pushed the envelope" by staying in Baghdad, but he said that both made the decision to remain in a country that was about to be attacked. McAllester said that he and Saman "knew the risks." "We've both worked in war zones and in dangerous situations before and it's always a calculation," he said. "I think we're relatively aggressive reporters, and sometimes we will take the risks."
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