Google 'saved' Australian hostage

And here is a transcript of that interview:

Transcript
This is a transcript from AM. The program is broadcast around Australia at 08:00 on ABC Local Radio.



AM - Tuesday, 19 October , 2004 08:00:00
Reporter: Mark Willacy
TONY EASTLEY: An Australian journalist snatched by insurgents in Iraq, has contradicted claims by Foreign Minister Alexander Downer that he was kidnapped in a part of Baghdad where he was advised not to go.

John Martinkus was reporting for SBS when Iraqi nationalists put pistols to his head and held him for 20 hours before releasing him unharmed. The journalist says he was threatened with death but he says he managed to convince his captors to free him.

After arriving in the Jordanian capital Amman from Baghdad, John Martinkus spoke to the ABC's Middle East Correspondent, Mark Willacy, who filed this report for AM.

MARK WILLACY: Having finished filming his report for SBS, John Martinkus was preparing to leave Baghdad behind. But heading out of his hotel three days ago the Australian journalist had a pistol put to his head.

JOHN MARTINKUS: Yeah of course they said they were going to kill me.

MARK WILLACY: Over the next 20 hours, John Martinkus was taken to several locations around Baghdad and interrogated by his abductors. The veteran journalist says he spent every moment of his captivity trying to convince the heavily-armed gunmen to release him.

JOHN MARTINKUS: I told them what I was doing. I wasn't armed. I was able to basically establish that I was an independent journalist reporting what was going on, and that I had no links to the Coalition.

MARK WILLACY: But his captors remained suspicious.

Initially they thought Martinkus was a CIA agent or a contractor working for the US. Then they entered his name into an internet search engine to check his story. Convinced he had no links to the United States, his captors let him go.

The men who abducted Martinkus are believed to be former Iraqi soldiers turned nationalist insurgents. And they told him that if he'd been taken by an Islamic group, he would have stood no chance of survival.

Working in Iraq is the most dangerous journalistic assignment going around. And Foreign Minister Alexander Downer says John Martinkus was in a part of Baghdad he was advised not to be in.

ALEXANDER DOWNER: In this particular case, the journalist went out to investigate a story, I understand, and went to a part of Baghdad that he was advised not to go to, but he went there anyway, and journalists do do that sort of thing.

MARK WILLACY: But speaking to AM in Amman before flying home to Australia, John Martinkus rejected Mr Downer's statement that he had ignored advice.

JOHN MARTINKUS: Well that's ridiculous, because I was actually in the street outside the only hotel in Baghdad occupied by journalists ? the al Hamra ? which is directly across the road from the Australian embassy.

I was nowhere dangerous, I was doing nothing dangerous, I was not putting myself at risk. I was grabbed by insurgents who were very well organised, and they know exactly what we're doing.

MARK WILLACY: This is Mark Willacy in Amman for AM.