Phil Sands seems to lead a charmed life. The British freelance journo was found by accident on New Year's Eve having been captured by Iraqi gunmen for five days who threatened to behead him in their usual inimitable way.

The story is reported by Al Jazeera Reuters and as usual fails to really do any homework at all and just spews out the usual anti-US bile. Use of a little-known internet tool named Google turned up that Phil Sands has been in trouble before - as a human shield in Iraq trying to prevent the same US that rescued him from doing its job.

Still, Mr. Sands is troubled by the conflicting goals and propaganda. "In all our rooms, there is a picture of the great man [Saddam Hussein] - we sleep under him," says Sands, whose cot is in spartan staff residence house No. 37, at the Doura Oil refinery on the southern outskirts of Baghdad. Painted on the front patio in large letters are the words: "We are here."

Of course no good deed goes unpunished and within two weeks he appears in Peace News being expelled from Iraq as a security risk.

In his most recent adventure, he was apparently abducted the day after Christmas, and nobody noticed.

In an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle, Sands recalled thinking during his ordeal: "I'm dead. From this moment on, I'm dead."

Until the US troops found him blindfolded and handcuffed in a chance raid, whereupon he momentarily forgot which side he was on and convinced them he was a "friendly".

I'm yet to be convinced that he was taken against his will, as seems to have been the case so often with captured anti-US journos who are released later unharmed. Maybe its just that I have yet to see Mr. Sands utter one word of thanks for the US troops that rescued him in any of the news reports so far.

There is probably more to come. The Observer reports:

Sands, from Poole, Dorset, has been to Iraq 10 times since February 2003, sometimes for three-month spells...

...Sands's parents, David and Jackie, were in a state of blissful ignorance throughout, as were the authorities. They spoke to their son on Christmas Day, then went on holiday [to Morocco]. David said last night: 'We were fortunate that we didn't go through the nail-biting anxiety of knowing he was missing. I feel fairly philosophical about it, and so does my wife. He loves that place and I'm sure he'll be going back.'