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Irish Government sends team of officials in hunt for Journalist

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Thursday, October 20, 2005

The Irish Minister for Foreign Affairs Mr. Dermot Ahern has announced that he will send a team of five officials to Iraq to secure the release of kidnapped journalist Mr Rory Carroll.

The team will be lead by Antoin Mac Unfraidh, the former Ambassador to Iraq and will liase with the Irish Government's contacts in Iraq.

Officials from the Department of Foreign Affairs say they have been working through the night to try to gather information about Mr Carroll’s whereabouts.

Brian Cowen, the minister for Finance, acting on behalf of the Taoiseach said "I call on anybody who has any influence in that area to assist. We are trying to do all we can through our contacts".

The Taoiseach Bertie Ahern himself told BBC News that he hoped the kidnappers would bear in mind he was "an Irish person not involved in any way" with the Iraqi conflict. "We in fact granted him a passport in Irish, in our own language, in order to ensure that he would use this in such a way that to emphasise his Irishness in cases of difficulty."

Chairman of the Irish Anti-War coaliton said that he was "entirely innocent of any crime against the Iraqi people", adding: "No cause will be served by keeping him in captivity or harming him in any way."

Carrolls editor at the Guardian Alan Rusbridger issued a statement saying that "He is in Iraq as a professional journalist - and he's a very good, straight journalist whose only concern is to report fairly and truthfully about the country. We urge those holding him to release him swiftly - for the sake of his family and for the sake of anyone who believes the world needs to be kept fully informed about events in Iraq today."

All sides of Political debte in Ireland expressed condemnation of the abduction and support for the Governments efforts to secure the release of the 33 year old Journalist from The Guardian.

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This page is archived, and is no longer publicly editable.
Articles presented on Wikinews reflect the specific time at which they were written and published, and do not attempt to encompass events or knowledge which occur or become known after their publication.

Got a correction? Add the template {{editprotected}} to the talk page along with your corrections, and it will be brought to the attention of the administrators.

Please note that due to our archival policy, we will not alter or update the content of articles that are archived, but will only accept requests to make grammatical and formatting corrections.

Note that some listed sources or external links may no longer be available online due to age.

The text of this article is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License
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