Apparently Al-Sadr realized he weren’t going to achieve the desired result from killing him. But note that he won his release, at least according to this, because he opposes administration policies. From Reuters:
DUBAI (Reuters) – U.S. journalist Micah Garen was on Sunday freed by an Iraqi group who had held him hostage in the southern Iraqi city of Nassiriya.
“I am very grateful to everyone who worked to protect me and guarantee my release and I thank my friends in Nassiriya and my family and fiance who spent three months with me in Nassiriya,” Garen told Arab satellite television Al Jazeera by telephone.
He was speaking from the Nassiriya office of rebel Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.
“Today he was brought to the office of Sheikh Sadr in Nassiriya and he is now there. We have called the human rights body in Nassiriya to come and receive him,” Aws al-Khafaji, an aide to Sadr, told Al Jazeera.
Garen, of New York-based company Four Corners Media, said he was seized while taking pictures with a small camera at a market in Nassiriya.
“People misunderstood what I was taking pictures of. There was a misunderstanding,” he said without elaborating. His comments were translated into Arabic by the channel.
A group calling itself the Secret Action Group of the Mehdi Army said in an Internet statement on Friday it was holding a U.S. journalist hostage and would release him on Saturday because he was opposed to U.S. administration policies.