Go to: Orly Halpern Halpern, an American freelance journalist, was kidnapped by a group of Iraqi highway bandits near Falluja on April 6, 2004, after a fight broke out between U.S. forces, Sunnis and Shiites. Halpern and her British colleague, Stephen Farrell, were released the same day, after Halpern said she talked her way free by speaking Arabic to hostage-takers and convincing them that she and Farrell were journalists, not CIA.