British hostage freed

The British journalist who was kidnapped in the southern Iraqi city of Basra on Friday was released by his captors, eyewitnesses said.

The witnesses said the British journalist, James Brandon, who was working for Britain's Sunday Telegraph newspaper, was handed over to the Basra office of radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.

    "I'm grateful to the Mehdi Army and I'm in good health now," Brandon told reporters shortly after his release in Basra.

TV footage released on August 13, 2004, shows a British journalist having a cloth wrapped around his head by a hooded militant in Iraq. Iraqi militants kidnapped the journalist in the southern city of Basra and threatened to kill him if U.S. Forces did not stop assaulting the Shiite holy city of Najaf within 24 hours.

Brabdon thanked Sadr's Mehdi Army because they "intervened and negotiated with the kidnappers."

Early Friday, a group of unidentified gunmen kidnapped the British journalist from his hotel in Basra when they stormed the Al-Diyafa hotel on Thursday.

The gunmen threatened to kill the hostage if US forces do not stop assaulting the Shiite holy city of Najaf within 24 hours.

But Ahmed al-Khalisy, head of Sadr's office in Basra, condemned the kidnapping Friday and called on the captors to release Brandon immediately.

Sadr's followers in the Mehdi Army militia have been involved in an outbreak of fighting with US forces in the Shiite Muslim holy city of Najaf since Aug 5.

Source: Xinhua