Bump and Update: Kidnapping hostage Micah Garen has been released, according to MSNBC (on tv.)

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Original Post: Iraqi Militants Threaten to Kill U.S. Journalist
8/18/04

Iraqi militants are threatening to kill a U.S. journalist.

A group calling itself the Martyrs Brigades said they are holding the American journalist Micah Garen. The group threatened to kill the hostage after 48 hours if U.S. forces do not withdraw from Najaf," Al Jazeera said. Garen was kidnapped last week in the southern Iraqi city of Nassiriya. Garen works for New York-based media production company Four Corners Media.

The kidnapping may have been related to Garen's efforts to save cultural relics from being looted:

Reporters Without Borders said in a statement that Garen's disappearance "may have been a kidnapping for ransom, or that certain circles worried about looters of ancient relics may have been troubled by the journalist's work."

Garen's photographs and written accounts of the looting of Iraq's treasures have appeared in Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11," The New York Times and U.S. News and World Report. It was his determination to preserve history that kept Garen returning to Iraq and the Middle East for independent photography and writing assignments, said Marie-Helene Carleton, his fiancee and partner in Four Corners Media, the company he founded. "He has a passion for Sumerian archaeology," said Carleton, of the West Village. "That's why he spent a year of his life working to make sure it was safeguarded."

Reporters Without Borders has more, inlcuding a plea from the 36 year old's fiance for a safe return.