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Alert

RSF concerned about fate of missing American journalist

(RSF/IFEX) - RSF is concerned about the fate of American reporter Micah Garen, who disappeared, along with his Iraqi translator Amir Doshe, in Nassiriyah, southern Iraq, on 13 August 2004. The 36-year-old was filming a documentary on the country's cultural history and the risk posed by the current conflict to archaeological sites.

Garen's fiancée, Marie-Hélène Carleton, said in a telephone interview with RSF that she fears the journalist has been kidnapped.

"I am appealing to Micah Garen's kidnappers to please release him. He was simply doing his job as a journalist by independently reporting on recent events in Iraq and by trying to help preserve Iraq's archaeological heritage," Carleton said.

Garen is one of the directors of Four Corners Media, a production company based in New York that specialises in the production of video, photographic and written reports for major media clients in the United States. The journalist's family has had no news of him since 13 August. According to several news agencies, Garen and Doshe were likely abducted from Nassiriyah's central market.

Doshe's family has also condemned the kidnapping.

"We are urging the Iraqi police, as well as any Italian military authorities present in the area, to do everything possible to locate the two men, but to avoid doing anything that might put their lives in danger," RSF said.

So far, no one has come forward to claim responsibility for the kidnapping. Nor is there any indication that Garen was abducted by militants on one side of the conflict in order to exert pressure on the other, as in the case of British journalist James Brandon, abducted in Bassorah on 12 August (see IFEX alerts of 13 August 2004). It is possible that the journalist may have been kidnapped for ransom, or that his work to preserve archeological relics may have been considered threatening to looters or those in collaboration with them.