Three US journalists missing in Iraq
1st
April 2003 Credit: ABC News
http://www.abc.net.au/news/media
An
American journalist who was former Vice President
Al Gore's photographer is missing in Iraq along with
two other US journalists taken from their Baghdad
hotel, the photographer's family said on Monday.
Molly
Bingham, who was Mr Gore's photographer during his
failed presidential bid against President George W
Bush in 2000, was taken by Iraqi police from her room
in the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad last Tuesday, her
cousin, Clara Bingham, said.
"They
searched her room, packed up all her belongings and
they took her away," Ms Bingham in said an interview
with US ABC TV's Good Morning America program.
Ms
Bingham said the family feared 34-year-old Molly Bingham
was taken because she had worked as Mr Gore's official
photographer and that Iraq believed she was a spy.
"We
are really frantic at this stage," Clara Bingham
said.
She
said her cousin, who was freelancing in Baghdad, had
been detained by Iraqi authorities for four hours
the previous Saturday and had called her sister after
the questioning to say she was safe.
She
also had emailed her parents.
Two
other journalists working for New York's Newsday newspaper
also disappeared last Tuesday from the Palestine Hotel
and are still missing, managing editor Charlotte Hall
said on the same show.
Ms
Hall said she had last heard from 33-year-old Matthew
McAllester and photographer 29-year-old Moises Saman,
a week ago.
She
said the paper had been in contact with the Iraqi
delegation at the United Nations, the International
Committee of the Red Cross and the Papal Nuncio but
had not heard anything of the journalists' whereabouts.
Newsday is one of the largest daily newspapers in
the United States, serving Long Island and New York.
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