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| Romanian press turns hostile against ex-hostages |
| 2005-06-01 |
| BUCHAREST (Reuters) - Romanian journalists accused a private television station of exploiting the ordeal of three colleagues held hostage in Iraq for 55 days during their first news conference on Wednesday. Hundreds of Romanian journalists had organized solidarity marches demanding the release of the three, who were kidnapped on March 28 while on a trip to Baghdad together with their guide Mohamad Munaf. But sympathy turned into hostility during the news conference, after the three refused to answer questions about how they were released, saying the information was classified. Anger was compounded by the way private Prima TV, where two of the kidnapped journalists work, did not allow cameramen from other stations to film the conference held in front of a huge "Prima TV" logo and limited reporters' questions. "Shame on you for taking commercial advantage of this," Ziua newspaper foreign news editor Victor Roncea told Prima TV news editors sitting near the three ex-hostages. Reporters pounded the three with questions about their connections to their guide and the Romanian-Syrian businessman who planned and partly financed their trip. Both have been charged with setting up the abduction. "Munaf was with us in that cellar, he was crying," said Prima TV cameraman Sorin Miscoci, one of the former hostages. "It's hard to believe that a man can submit himself willingly to that treatment, you can't imagine how it was there." Miscoci, 30, Prima TV reporter Marie Jeanne Ion, 32, and Romania Libera daily reporter Ovidiu Ohanesian, 37, returned to Romania on May 23 but Munaf, who has Iraqi and U.S. citizenship, remained in the hands of U.S. forces in Baghdad for questioning. The three were showed in a video aired by Al-Jazeera in April sitting on the floor barefoot and handcuffed. Ion asked Romanian authorities to pull out its 800 troops from Iraq. Romanian prosecutors charged Munaf and Romanian-Syrian businessman Omar Hayssam with the kidnapping, saying it was a plot to turn Hayssam into a hero in Romania in the hope that it would help him escape potential punishment for previous charges of organized crime and economic-financial wrongdoings. The three refused to answer questions such as how they were released or where they had been detained, saying other people's lives were at risk if they spoke about it. They said they were kept in a dark cellar and could only guess their captors' mood by the amount of food given or if they were allowed more trips to the toilet. "It's not worth paying such a price just to get professional satisfaction," Ion said. "We were living in fear, we didn't know what would happen in the next five minutes." |
| Posted by:Steve |