BAGHDAD — Wearing a U.S. Army uniform and flanked by Iraqi lawmakers, an American citizen announced Saturday that he was being released from more than nine months of imprisonment by a Shiite militia that for years targeted U.S. troops.
The man did not identify himself. But at a bizarre news conference outside the Green Zone in Baghdad, lawmakers showed U.S.-issued military and contractor ID cards that identified him as Randy Michael Hultz.
Speaking calmly and tripping over Arabic names in a monotone voice, Hultz said he was grateful for his release.
“It was explained to me that this is a gift to me, my family and to the American people who oppose the war,” he said.
He gave scant details of what he described as a “kidnapping,” or how he was treated while captured.
“I was taken inside Baghdad and kept in and around different locations within the city,” Hultz said. The kidnappers, he said, were from the Promised Day Brigade, a branch of the Mahdi Army, which is a militia controlled by the anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.
Al-Sadr’s militia led some of the bloodiest attacks against American troops at the height of the sectarian fighting in Iraq that brought the country to the brink of civil war. Followers of the cleric, who currently is thought to be studying in Iran, led the government’s demands for U.S. troops to leave Iraq last December after nearly nine years of war.
Al-Sadr disbanded most of his militia and joined politics, although he kept the Promised Day Brigade, a smaller group of fighters who carried out attacks against U.S. troops and facilities.
Hultz was flanked at the news conference by lawmakers Maha al-Douri and Qusay al-Suhail, the deputy speaker of Iraq’s parliament. Al-Douri read a statement she said was from the Promised Day Brigade, which said it kidnapped Hultz mainly as “revenge for the beloved Iraqi nation and restrain for the American forces.”
Hultz said he deployed to Iraq in 2003 as an active-duty soldier but left the military after 15 months. At that point, he said, he worked in a “civilian capacity” until his kidnapping on June 18, 2011.
