By Mairead Carey

Irish journalist Rory Carroll, who was last week kidnapped but later freed by his kidnappers in Iraq, is celebrating his release in Dublin.

Carroll, the son of the former Washington correspondent of The Irish Times Joe Carroll, flew home to Dublin on Saturday after his two-day ordeal in Baghdad.

The journalist, who works for The Guardian newspaper in the U.K., told reporters that he feared he would suffer the same fate as other western hostages when he was kidnapped in Baghdad..

He was captured by armed gunmen in the Shia Muslim slums of Baghdad’s Sadr City last Wednesday and freed on Thursday night after 36 hours in captivity.

Carroll, 33, said he felt “very, very fortunate” at being released. “To be kidnapped in Baghdad as a westerner is not good news. We know the outcome of other hostages taken before..

“So not only to be released alive, but to be released so swiftly is extraordinary. I feel very, very fortunate,” he said.

Carroll thanked the Irish, British, and Iraqi governments, all of whom “did wonders” for him.

It is believed that Carroll may have been kidnapped by Shia militia trying to secure the release of members being held by the British Army in Basra.

The Baghdad correspondent said that he had repeatedly told his kidnappers that he was Irish and not British. He said he used references to the IRA, U2, and even drew a map of Western Europe to pinpoint his home country..

But the significance “didn’t seem to register” with the men holding him, he said. “At the end I was down to Enya, Fair City, so at that point I gave up,” he laughed.

He told reporters that he feared he would meet the same fate as murdered Irish aid worker Margaret Hassan.

“Lying there in the dark...I was bracing myself that at some point I would hear a car coming into the house. I knew I would be able to hear it across the gravel, and that there would be a bunch of guys with guns and that I would be put into their custody and be taken, with a hood over my head, to an uncertain destination and to an uncertain fate,” he said..

“I assumed that was going to happen at some point.”