A STREET entertainer arrested in Iraq by US forces has been freed from custody after more than three weeks in a Baghdad jail.

Michael Todd, a 33-year-old from York, who performs under the name Michael Mime, was released on Friday.

He was picked up by US soldiers on July 4 after he was found trying to cross the border into Turkey, at Sulaymaniyah, in northern Iraq.

He was arrested by US soldiers, who had no idea who he was or why he was trying to cross the border.

However, after checking what he told them, and contact from the British Consulate, he has been released, although his whereabouts are not known.

Mr Todd, who lives in Bishophill, York, left for Iraq at the end of February on a mission to trace his estranged Iraqi girlfriend, Abla, and their daughter Sajida, two.

He had a relationship with Abla, 32, when she was a student in Leeds, but she disappeared when she was pregnant, despite their intention to marry.

She later contacted him from Iraq and in her last letter, posted in January, she begged him not to go out there, saying it was dangerous.

Last month he arrived in Turkey and told reporters Abla had been killed in the Allied bombing of the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk.

He said the Turkish government allowed him to cross into northern Iraq, and that he was determined to find his daughter.