This missing three are Marie Jeanne Ion (reporter) and Sorin Dumitru Miscoci (cameraman) from Prima TV and Ovidiu Ohanesian (reporter) from Romania Libera.
The Prima TV news department announced on Monday night that it had lost contact with its team in Baghdad and that, "in all likelihood, special correspondent Marie Jeanne Ion and cameraman Sorin Miscoci had been kidnapped by a group of rebels on the outskirts of Baghdad at around 19.45, Romania time."
A Prima TV release sent to Mediafax news agency shows that at the time of the kidnapping, Marie Jeanne Ion had managed to make a phone call to the station. "Those who listened to the conversation put on speakerphone understood that Marie Jeanne Ion was trying to explain to the kidnappers that there was no point in what they were doing because they were only Romanian journalists who had no money for the ransom," the release shows.
The three arrived in Iraq by plane, with a stop in Amman. They were accompanied by an Iraqi-American businessman who also has business dealings in Romania. He covered most of the costs of the journalists' trip and facilitated meetings with Iraqi officials. The journalists were supposed to meet with Iraqi officials, had already interviewed the country's interim prime minister and were about to interview the new Iraqi president.
The United States Embassy in Romania shares the Romanian government's and its people's concern for the fate of the journalists kidnapped in Baghdad on Monday. It is fully supportive of the efforts being made to ensure the safe release of the three journalists as soon as possible. The embassy press office was unable to confirm whether the man who was kidnapped along with the Romanian journalists was an American citizen.
President Traian Basescu called an operative meeting at Cotroceni Palace, the presidential headquarters, yesterday at 11 a.m. in order to keep under control, observe and analyse the retrieval of the three Romanian journalists that went missing on Monday.
The kidnappers could provide information on the conditions for release some several days later, according to what was said by officials from the Al-Jazeera news channel, Prima TV's News Editor Dan Dumitru told Mediafax. Mediafax
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