After seven days filled with “lots of dark dead-ends and no clear leads,” Jim Dooley, Newsday‘s Assistant Managing Editor, exclaimed above the staff applause in the background, “They are out, they are alive … They are going to Jordan!”
Minutes later, Newsday reported on its website that journalists Matthew McAllester and Moises Saman, who had been missing in Iraq since last week, crossed the border into Jordan Tuesday and said they were safe and in good health.
MSNBC.com is also reporting that Molly Bingham, a freelance photojournalist who was traveling with McAllester and Saman, has made contact with her family. The site also reports that Danish freelance photographer, Johan Rydeng Spanner, was with the group.
According to Dooley, who spoke with the two Newsday journalists via telephone, “They are both tired, dirty and hungry. The five of them were taken out of their Bagdad hotel eight days ago. Once outside, they were handcuffed. They were taken to a prison and placed individually in one-person cells. The wing of the prison had about 15 cells, mainly for people suspected of being spies. They were not tortured. They were questioned several times.”
McAllester telephoned Newsday foreign editor Dele Olojede at 1:06 pm EST to say the two were fine. Dooley accepted the call, moments later, from his secretary Sandy Garry, who spoke to Saman first.
“It was just so good to hear his voice,” Garry said. “Don’t quote me on anything else. Talk to Jeff.”
Jeff Schamberry is the Deputy Director of Photography and runs the Queens photography staff where Saman is assigned.
“We are ecstatic around here, through seven days of not knowing, we remained optimistic, but were worried,” Schamberry said.
He confirmed that details are very sketchy right now, but that the journalists were detained by Iraqi intelligence people.
The two journalists had been missing since last Monday night, when Saman, a photographer, wrote his last e-mail to Dooley. McAllester, a reporter, never filed his story. The two were covering the war for Newsday in Baghdad.
