"They held him for over 50 days - and for what?," she added.
Relatives and friends of Mr. Kar, as well as anthropologists, filmmakers and others who had worked with him, gave a reporter detailed accounts of how he had gone to Iraq to try to complete the filming of a historical documentary he was trying to make about the ancient Persian king Cyrus the Great.
Over the previous two years, they said, Mr. Kar had already shot more than 40 hours of footage in the United States, Germany, Britain, Iran, Tajikistan and Afghanistan. He was determined to visit Babylon, the fabled city south of Baghdad that Cyrus the Great had conquered in 539 B.C., freeing its Jewish captives in a show of magnanimity.
A Pentagon official said Mr. Kar was turned over to American custody immediately by the Iraqi security forces and was never mistreated. He was detained and interrogated at Camp Cropper, the American prison at the Baghdad airport that holds Saddam Hussein and some of his former aides, an official said.
