Google saves kidnapped reporter
p2pnet.net News:- Australian journalist John Martinkus was reporting for SBS Television when Iraqi nationalists, “put pistols to his head” and kidnapped him.
The first Aussie to be held hostage since the US-led invasion, he was grabbed in a part of Baghdad where he’d been advised not to go, according to foreign minister Alexander Downer.
But for once, the kidnapping didn’t end in tragedy. Martinkus was able to convince his captors he wasn’t a spy.
He managed that by going online and firing up Google.
Initially, the heavily armed kidnappers thought Martinkus was a CIA agent or a contractor working for the US, said AM’s Mark Willacy in a broadcast, but, “Then they entered his name into an internet search engine to check his story. Convinced he had no links to the United States, his captors let him go.”
Downer is quoted as saying, “In this particular case, the journalist went out to investigate a story, I understand, and went to a part of Baghdad that he was advised not to go to, but he went there anyway, and journalists do do that sort of thing.”
“Well that’s ridiculous, because I was actually in the street outside the only hotel in Baghdad occupied by journalists – the al Hamra – which is directly across the road from the Australian embassy,” Martinkus retorted.
“I was nowhere dangerous, I was doing nothing dangerous, I was not putting myself at risk. I was grabbed by insurgents who were very well organised, and they know exactly what we’re doing.”
===================
See:-
firing up Google – Australian journalist tells of capture in Iraq, AM, October 19, 2004
