BAGHDAD: The US military in Iraq on Wednesday freed an Iraqi freelance journalist working for the Thomson Reuters media group after holding him for 17 months without charge, the company said.

“How can I describe my feelings? This is like being born again,” Reuters quoted 33-year-old Ibrahim Jassam Mohammed as saying by telephone, adding that he was greeted emotionally by his family.

The journalist told a foreign news agency that he was “very happy” to be free.

Mohammed, a freelance photographer and video cameraman for Reuters, was arrested after US and Iraqi forces broke into his home in the town of Mahmudiya in southern Iraq in September 2008.

A US army statement said at the time that Mohammed had been “assessed to be a threat to the security of Iraq and coalition forces.” But no charges were ever brought against him.

“I am very pleased his long incarceration without charge is finally over,” Reuters quoted its editor-in-chief, David Schlesinger, as saying.

“I wish the process to release a man who had no specific accusations against him had been swifter,” Schlesinger said.

Several journalists working for foreign news organisations, including AFP, have been arrested and held without charge by the US military in Iraq.