Kidnap

The Guardian's Baghdad correspondent, Rory Carroll, recounts his harrowing kidnapping experience:

"It was 2.15pm on Wednesday, and a moment I had dreaded since moving to Iraq nine months earlier had arrived: kidnap. A potential death sentence for Iraqi staff as well as the foreign correspondents who are the targets. Since hostages started having their heads sawn off we have all been obsessed by it.

"In agreement with my Iraqi colleagues, the plan, if cornered, was for me to leg it. With a gun at my head that was not an option. I was bundled out and thrown into a Honda. I glimpsed Omar sprawled on the ground, an AK-47 trained on him."