The father of kidnapped journalist Rory Carroll spoke yesterday of how his son was aware of the security risks of working in Iraq but played them down.
Rory "went out of his way to reassure us he wasn't in danger" in Iraq, said Mr Carroll. He used to "play down" the security risk. "But we knew, given the set-up there, there must be dangers for all journalists there."
Joe Carroll, a former journalist and Washington Correspondent for The Irish Times, said his son had gone on a training course organised by the Guardian at which he learnt how best to react in a kidnapping situation.
"It's going to be very upsetting for him obviously. But I just hope and I'm fairly confident he will react sensibly."
An experienced journalist who had previously worked for the Guardian in the Balkans and in Africa, Rory Carroll was serving a year-long posting in Iraq which had just three months left to run.
From Blackrock, Co Dublin, the 33-year-old is a graduate of economics and politics at Trinity College Dublin. He completed a Masters degree in journalism at Dublin City University before starting work in journalism with the Irish News in Belfast, where he earned a young journalist of the year award in 1997.
The Guardian spotted his talent at an early stage and posted him to Rome as Southern Europe correspondent in 1999. Three years later, he was appointed Africa Correspondent. In one of his final reports from the continent last January, he described how he had been held up by a knife-wielding youth in Johannesburg.
He wrote that he had chased his attacker and even picked up the boy's discarded knife. But he tempered his comments with praise for the troubled city, saying he was happy to pay the price of "chronic, low-level anxiety" for the privilege of living there.
His father said Rory had been asked at the end of 2004 to spend a year in Iraq to relieve the Guardian's Baghdad Correspondent Rory McCarthy. "They did not say, 'You have to go'. But obviously if you are asked you like to say, 'Yes'. We were hoping the year would be up sooner than later."
Joe Carroll himself worked for the Guardian for a time, filing reports from Paris, and also served as a press spokesman for the EEC Commission, before joining The Irish Times in 1986. He travelled widely for The Irish Times, serving as Diplomatic Correspondent and, for five years, Washington Correspondent until his retirement in 2001.
Mr Carroll, who had received calls of support yesterday from the Taoiseach, and the British consulate in Baghdad, among others, said his son "is quite laid back, and has a good sense of humour". "It's a waiting game now," he said. "We can only pray that it goes as well as possible for him."
Alan Rusbridger, the Guardian's editor, said: "We're deeply concerned at Rory's disappearance... We urge those holding him to release him swiftly - for the sake of his family and for the sake of anyone who believes the world needs to be kept fully informed about events in Iraq today."
