2 missing journalists may be in Iraqi custody

AMMAN, Jordan -- Newsday editors now believe its two journalists missing in Baghdad have been detained by Iraqi authorities, according to editor Anthony Marro.

The paper has had no contact with correspondent Matthew McAllester and photographer Moises Saman since Monday. They failed to file their story and photos as planned, and other journalists found their hotel room empty the following morning.

Also causing concern, Marro said, is that Newsday was told that security police were checking the credentials of other journalists in the same hotel that night, and removed some and ordered others expelled from the country.

After their disappearance, Newsday learned that security officers had been questioning other people about McAllester and Saman. Initially, Iraqi officials told reporters in Baghdad that they were part of a group of journalists who were being deported because of visa irregularities, but they have not been heard from since, and the Iraqi government has not acknowledged holding them.

"On the basis of interviews with journalists who saw them last, and who in some cases had similar experiences with Iraqi security officials, we believe they are being held," Marro said.

"Mr. McAllester and Mr. Saman were in Baghdad for only one purpose -- to report the news for Newsday. They have worked for us for years and are both terrific journalists," Marro said. "We appeal to Iraqi officials to explain their whereabouts, to allow us to contact them directly and to arrange their safe passage out of Iraq."

Iraqi diplomats at the United Nations have told Newsday that they are anxious to assist the newspaper in establishing the journalists' whereabouts. But they say that telecommunications disruption in Baghdad has hampered their efforts to get information on the case.

Their current assignment in Iraq is not their first. McAllester had previously written extensively about the country. In 2000 he wrote a series of articles on the suffering of Iraqi children after years of U.N. sanctions. Last October, he and Saman were duly accreditted by Iraqi authorities to report on the country, and they are well-known to Iraqi officials as journalists.

Iraqi officials have made no public statement about the incident in which the Newsday journalists and at least three other Westerners disappeared from the Palestine International Hotel during a sweep by security officers Monday night. A peace activists' group Saturday retracted a report issued Friday saying the other three had surfaced in Syria.

According to Nate Thayer, an American journalist who arrived here from Baghdad on Friday, security officials entered the Palestine during the pre-dawn hours Tuesday. Seven men spent about five hours searching his room and that of his photographer, Molly Bingham of Washington, D.C., Thayer said.

After bagging and logging all of Bingham's belongings, they escorted her out of the hotel, he said. Hours later, Thayer and a colleague, Italian photographer Marco DiLauro, discovered that several other rooms -- including those of McAllester and Saman -- had been emptied of their occupants and equipment.

DiLauro reported a similar raid by security agents Thursday night, in which they searched for satellite telephones, whose use is sharply restricted in Iraq.

Journalists in Baghdad have pressed Iraqi officials for information about Saman and McAllester. Reporters in Baghdad face tight restrictions and heavy pressures from the government, and asked not to be quoted discussing the case of McAllester and Saman.

Marro stressed that Newsday has no formal confirmation that McAllester and Saman are under any form of arrest. "We heard at first that this was over an issue of visas," he said. Still, he added, "McAllester and Saman are staff correspondents. ... Every interview they did and every photo they took were for the sole purpose of informing our readers."

Newsday has been seeking contact with Iraqi authorities through various diplomatic, political and personal channels. Among those assisting the newspaper is the bishop of the Diocese of Rockville Center on Long Island, William Murphy, who is contacting the papal nuncio in Baghdad to make representation to Iraqi authorities on behalf of the Newsday journalists.

While those taken from the hotel remained missing, seven Italian journalists surfaced in Baghdad Thursday, a day after Iraqi forces detained them in the southern city of Basra. Italian newspapers said the reporters had been taken to a Baghdad hotel and told to await instructions from Iraqi authorities. The journalists reported that they had been well-treated in custody.

Media officials in Baghdad summoned correspondents to a meeting Saturday night and stressed that reporters must strictly observe official rules about what hotels they may stay in, which rental car drivers they may employ and what credentials they must carry. The government requires journalists to be accompanied by government "minders" who track their movements and monitor their conversations.

McAllester, 33, recently completed a four-year assignment as Newsday's bureau chief in the Middle East. He has covered many wars and conflicts, including those between Israel and the Palestinians, the Northern Ireland "troubles," the 1999 Kosovo war and the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in 2001.

McAllester is a British citizen who moved to the United States. He is "very ambitious and very thorough -- a believer in the power of communicating and what good it could do in the world," his sister, Janey, 35, said in a telephone interview from London. "He is very much involved in the human aspect of stories, how people are dealing with difficult situations."

She said her parents, who are in their 60s, are worried but they are also confident. "They believe Matt will come through it fine," she said.

Saman, 29, is a native of Lima, Peru, who was raised in Barcelona. As a teenager, he decided to try to do his college studies in the United States, and moved to California. At first supporting himself with low-paying jobs such as dish-washing in restaurants, he made his way to California State University at Fullerton, where he studied photography. Saman also is a veteran of covering wars such as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the Afghan war of 2001, during which he was teamed with McAllester.

Saman's mother has been following news of his disappearance in almost daily telephone calls to Newsday editors.

With hundreds of foreign journalists in Baghdad, and hundreds more traveling with U.S. troops, the Iraq war is becoming by many measures the most-covered conflict in history. But at times, the crowd of journalists is getting pulled into the conflict in ways they do not want.

Since the war began, two foreign journalists -- one British, one Australian -- have been killed.

According to a count by Reuters news agency, seven journalists, including Saman and McAllester, were missing in Iraq as of Saturday. Three of the missing are a team from Al Arabiya, an Arabic-language television station in Dubai. The two others are from a British network, Independent Television News.

The Reuters count did not include Bingham or the other photographer taken from the Palestine International Hotel Monday night. He is Johan Spanner, 29, a Danish citizen.

Distributed by the Los Angeles Times-Washington Post News Service