Frenchman Tells of Ordeal as Iraq Captive

A French television journalist, freed after four days in captivity in Iraq, said Thursday that he was repeatedly interrogated by captors who accused him of being an Israeli spy and made him prove his nationality by drawing a map of France.

Alex Jordanov, 40, was freed Wednesday and taken to the French Embassy, where he collapsed from exhaustion and spent his first hours as a free man staring blankly at a ceiling.

“When you are under high pressure 24/7 for four days, everything just ... comes tumbling down,” Jordanov said at a Baghdad hotel. He appeared to be in good health but had small red spots on his face and hands, which he said were a result of having to sleep outside in the brush with frogs, bugs and “all sorts of animals I’ve never seen crawling all around.”

Jordanov, who works for Capa Television in Paris, was kidnapped Sunday while videotaping an insurgent attack on a U.S. military convoy between Baghdad and Karbala, to the south.

The worst moment came when the kidnappers discovered an old press card he had from reporting assignments in Israel and accused him of working for the nation’s Mossad spy agency.

Militants later demanded that he prove he was French by drawing a map of the country and pointing out where small towns were located.