I remember screaming, though I don’t know what words I screamed. And I remember resisting, though there was little I could do in heels against two military-trained men intent on shoving me into the back seat of their vehicle.
Video surveillance captured the moment I was taken. In it, you can see two burly men walk past, watching nonchalantly as I struggle. Inside the vehicle, the men zip-tied my wrists and ankles, and blindfolded me. I kept asking them: Why?
I had been working in Iraq as a journalist for more than a decade. I had documented Iraq’s fight against the Islamic State from the front lines as a freelancer—at my own expense and at great risk. I had covered social, political, economic, and environmental issues, and had been welcomed into the homes of many Iraqi families whose stories I tried to tell with sensitivity and fairness. Why, I asked these men in Arabic, had they taken me? Why were they hurting me? What purpose did this serve?
“No speak!” one yelled, in what was apparently the only English he knew. He continued punching me on my side and my back. Something was pulled over my head—a bag or hood—that made it hard for me to breathe and move. The beating continued, viciously, as I was shoved to the floor behind the driver’s seat. My dress had been pulled up above my waist. I began praying softly in Arabic, which led to more pounding and my first loss of consciousness.
At one point, I was pulled out of a vehicle. My knees scraped across the ground. The stockings I was wearing would later be used to blindfold me; throughout my detention, they remained crusty with blood. I don’t remember being carried into the building where I would be held. I came to when I heard a voice asking where I should be dropped: “On the mattress?”
“Yes.”
I heard sounds that made me think we were still in an urban area. My legs were spread and my body was searched. I was in excruciating pain from what I later learned were several broken ribs, but I tried not to cry out; I had been told that I would be killed if I made any noise. Then I heard a voice that, in its humanity, offered me the slightest bit of hope.
“But she’s a woman,” this man said. He felt, or I imagined he felt, a touch of shame or pity. Perhaps he could see, in my agonized self, some trace of a woman he had known and loved.
I was taken hostage on March 31. Earlier in the day, I had stopped by an outdoor tea place where older men chat and network; an Iraqi journalist I knew was sitting there, and had spotted me walking past and waved me over. I then went back to my budget hotel, and changed into heels and more formal clothes. I had a meeting with an Iraqi government official whom I had known for years but had not seen for a while; I had arrived back in Baghdad only the week before. It was when I was trying to get a taxi to go to that meeting that I was grabbed off the street.
I had been warned multiple times over my years of reporting from Iraq that I might be targeted for kidnapping or assassination. However, this is always a risk for journalists who work on the ground, and none of the previous warnings had been followed by any attempts. I have never traveled with security—not in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, or elsewhere. I have always walked or used local transportation, and often stay with local families.
I had, however, known Iraqis who had been kidnapped or killed in Baghdad, allegedly by militias. I also knew that the Iran-linked militia Kataib Hezbollah was widely believed to have been behind several such incidents. But I could not know for certain whether this was the group that had taken me. And in those first hours and days, I had little energy to speculate. I was in immense pain and too focused on staying alive.
I don’t know how long I was held in the first location—a few days, probably. I was in a narrow, windowless cell of sorts, with a heavy door and a video camera that filmed me at all times. I remained shackled, and was taken out only a few times—always blindfolded—to use the bathroom in another part of what seemed to have once been someone’s home. To get in and out of the cell, I had to crawl through an opening in the door that was about a meter high. During one long stretch, no one came to open it. I was forced to urinate in the cell and wonder if I had been left there to die.
My captors would tell me nothing beyond that I was in “detention,” that I was in the “hands of the security forces,” and that, if I was innocent, I would be “released in a few days.”
At one point, having been left for many hours, I woke to a sort of booming sound, and then heard something heavy being moved outside the door. The crawl space opened, and a man entered, while another crouched just outside, wielding a knife. They said to do what I was told “for my own safety,” and to not speak a word. Blindfolded again with my bloody stockings, and with my wrists and ankles bound, I was dragged out and deposited in the trunk of a vehicle. I was moved to a second and then a third vehicle before I arrived at my next place of captivity.
Only one of the men from my first detention—the one whose voice had seemed to hint at shame or empathy—was present in this new place. I was later told that his “group” had taken me from the first “group” on the orders of “their leader”; I was unable to get additional information about this or to ascertain the veracity of it.
However, I was treated markedly better here. The blindfold was removed when I was locked into “my room”; the zip ties that cut into my skin were replaced by handcuffs that made moving around slightly easier. I could hear birds—I was somewhere more rural. This room was much larger, and I could get up and walk a bit. There was one window, frosted and half–boarded up. It let in some natural light, so I knew day from night, but I was warned not to get too close: “We’re ‘friends’ now,” one thin, dark-skinned man wearing a camouflage balaclava told me, “but if you try to see anything out that window or anywhere else, our ‘friendship’ ends there.”
If I tried to escape, I was told, I would be killed.
My guards granted me small mercies: yogurt and dates, as much water as I asked for, and frequent bathroom trips, as well as company of a sort and conversations that gradually became slightly more open. They propped up my injured torso on an extra blanket, asked me how I liked eggs and brought them for me, and gave me tissues and sanitary napkins—I had been menstruating heavily since the first day of captivity and had bled through my clothes. They even brought watermelon, noting that it was “good for healing.”
“You are innocent, we know that,” one of my captors said, but “there is a war right now, and you have an American passport.”
“There was also false information about you,” he added, “but we’ve understood that it was wrong.”
Although the men still wouldn’t tell me who they were, eventually one said, “But you know who we are, don’t you?”
“Maybe Kataib Hezbollah?” I said.
The group is possibly the most powerful—but also the most secretive—of the many armed factions in Iraq. It operates outside of Iraqi-government control but is linked to brigades within the Iraqi-government forces. Three brigades that are part of Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Forces—the 45th, 46th, and 47th, which are deployed south of Baghdad and near the border with Syria—originated from fighters trained under Kataib Hezbollah, who had declared loyalty to the supreme leader of Iran but now nominally report to the Iraqi government. The group also has a political wing whose members serve in the Iraqi Parliament.
The man said that I would find out who they were when I was released.
One day, a man brought me shampoo, pink pajamas, and a toothbrush. He took my handcuffs off long enough to allow me to try to wash myself a bit. I was told that “the investigative officer” was coming—the man who would determine my fate.
The “interrogation” that followed was a farce, as was the “confession” that was scripted by the “officer” (also referred to as “doctor” and “judge”) who interrogated me extensively about everything: how much money I made per article, why I was not married, whether I knew certain Iraqi journalists, what books I had read.
I was told that there were “accusations” against me. I was told that there were photos of me at the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, and that I had resided at the embassy for months, despite my never having even visited it. I was told that I had met with a man from the embassy in recent days and had given him information about the locations of Iran-linked armed factions and advisers—also untrue.
Next to the “investigative officer” was a large young man with black-rimmed designer glasses who mostly yelled “You’re lying!” after everything I said. He accused me of meeting with a U.S. official at the Babylon Hotel. I had recently chatted with someone in the lobby of the Babylon Hotel—a high-ranking Iraqi official whom I had known for years. Perhaps whoever had passed on the information had assumed that the Iraqi was American because he spoke excellent English. Or maybe the report was made up to give my captors an excuse to do what they were doing.
I was well aware of the risks inherent in being a journalist with the “wrong” passport in places where the default assumption is that anyone asking questions is a “spy.” I was also keenly aware of the creativity employed by those who write “intelligence” reports, having been the victim of fabricated reports of that sort in the past.
I had reported from the front lines alongside essentially every official armed force since first arriving, in late 2014, during the fight against the Islamic State: the army, the federal police, the Rapid Response Division, the Counter Terrorism Service, several brigades of the Popular Mobilization Forces, local police, and others. I had met Prime Minister Mohammed Shia’ al-Sudani. I had reported on people’s lives everywhere from Maysan, near the Iranian border, to Anbar, along the Syrian one, to Mosul and Sinjar in the north. And many Iraqis, including government officials, had acknowledged this fact and thanked me for my fairness. The respect I had earned had helped keep me safe before, but it had not prevented this.
The “investigative officer” told me that I could either do as I was told and recite the script he had written, in which case I could be released the next day, or I would be held for years. He then said, “There are a lot of people outside here that want to kill you. And if I walk out that door without the video, I take no responsibility for what happens to you. Your life depends on this. Choose well.”
The script consisted of nonsense about my having “gathered information on the leader of Kataib Hezbollah” and on bases of factions of the Iran-linked Islamic Resistance in Iraq. I was to say that I had relayed that information to U.S. embassy officials, including the consul. One issue was that the “investigative officer” wanted me to name the consul in the video, but I had no idea what his name was, and neither did my guards, so he eventually dropped this demand. I was also ordered to say that I had received three months of training from U.S. military officers on intelligence gathering or something of the sort in Syria in 2025, and before that in Ukraine—also easily debunked.
He gave me 30 minutes to learn the script by heart, and told me that I would be recording it in both English and Arabic, and that “there would be problems” if I was found not to have said the same thing in both. I was in no condition to refuse, if I wanted to live. And I did.
A tripod was set up. The handcuffs were removed, and one of the men pulled down my sleeves to cover the cuts and bruises on my arms. The video, with its absurd claims, was made.
The “investigative officer” seemed satisfied, calling the video my “ticket to freedom.” He said that he knew I was innocent but “it’s war now,” and that he hoped I could come back to Iraq and walk safely on its streets again.
Although the release did not happen the next day, I was eventually handed over—in the early morning hours of April 8. I later learned that Kataib Hezbollah had claimed responsibility for taking me hostage and had allegedly demanded the release of several of its fighters in exchange for my freedom. No official statement has been made about whether any were actually released. (I also learned that Kataib Hezbollah had announced my release several hours before it actually happened.)
Blindfolded once again, I was loaded into one vehicle, then transferred to another, and finally handed over to the official Iraqi-government forces, who took me to Baghdad’s Green Zone, where the president of Iraq’s Supreme Judicial Council, Faiq Zaidan, was waiting for me.
I was dazed, and still wearing the sweaty pink pajamas my captors had given me the day of the interrogation. I had removed my contact lenses my first night in captivity, so Zaidan’s face—like everything for the past week—was blurry. But his hands, when they clasped mine, were soft.
Before handing me over to officials from the U.S. embassy, who would take me to the embassy and then fly me to Europe to receive medical treatment, Zaidan told me that I would be welcomed back to Iraq in the future, and that he would grant me an interview whenever I returned.
Many important stories in Iraq deserve the attention of experienced journalists who know the country well, and who care deeply about it.
I have every intention of asking him to keep his word.
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