Arafat persuades Iraqis to release four journalists jailed on spying charge

Four journalists and a peace activist who were missing for eight days inside Iraq have emerged safely ­ with the apparent help of Yasser Arafat.

The freed journalists told yesterday how they had been accused of spying and held in the vast Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad, where they heard other prisoners being tortured outside their cells.

There had been grave concern for the journalists ­ Matt McAllester, a British reporter for New York-based Newsday, Moises Saman, a photographer for the same magazine, and Molly Bingham and Johan Rydeng Spanner, both freelance photographers ­ since they disappeared on 24 March. The peace activist released chose not to give his name.

It was revealed yesterday that Mr Arafat, the Palestinian leader whom the US and Israel are trying to sideline, had crucially intervened.

He instructed one of his former ambassadors to Iraq to contact the head of Iraqi military intelligence, the former US consul-general in Jerusalem, Ed Abington, told Newsday. The Iraqi official confirmed the journalists were in jail and helped to arrange their release. Mr Saman had a Palestinian grandparent.

Until late on Tuesday, all that was known was that other reporters had seen the journalists being taken from Baghdad's Palestinian Hotel, where they were staying, by Iraqi secret police. Other journalists detained were deported, but the four disappeared.

Late on Tuesday they suddenly appeared in the Jordanian town of Ruwaished, across the border from Iraq. Yesterday Mr McAllester and Mr Saman described their ordeal to their newspaper.

"We thought we were going to be killed at any moment," Mr McAllester said. "From the time we realised we were being taken to prison until the time we crossed the border into Jordan we felt our lives were in danger."

Ms Bingham said: "Every day it was a question of are they going to kill me or are they just going to ask me more questions?"

On 24 March Mr Saman and Mr McAllester were handcuffed and taken from their hotel room by two secret policemen to Abu Ghraib prison, a place dreaded in Iraq.

They were held for eight days, interrogated and accused of being US spies. They were not tortured but heard the screams of other prisoners. They saw some with bloodied faces and others who had had the soles of their feet burned.

Mr McAllester said he was pressured to sign a statement in Arabic he did not understand and refused. Mr Saman said they could hear bombs landing nearby at night. "At times it was extremely close," he said. They were given food including bananas and chicken soup.

Mr McAllester said they owed their release to the efforts of "hundreds of people we've never met. Friends, famous people, our editors who stopped editing the paper . . . We owe them our freedom and maybe our lives".