AN ACCLAIMED US war correspondent - whose journalistic career began on Merseyside - is embroiled in a long term conflict of his own after being sacked for refusing to cover the war in Iraq.
Canadian-born Richard Gizbert won his case for unfair dismissal against his former employers, the world media giant ABC, at the Central London Employment Tribunal in December last year.
Mr Gizbert, 47, who spent much of his childhood on Merseyside where his mother Anna still lives, claimed his contract was terminated in 2004 after he refused twice to report from Iraq due to family commitments.
The tribunal unanimously rejected ABC's arguments and ruled that Mr Gizbert had been unfairly dismissed on the grounds of health and safety.
But ABC are now appealing and Mr Gizbert - who has been under fire in Somalia, Bosnia, Rwanda and Chechnya - returned to the city he knows so well to gather support for his appeal support fund.
"It's the most dangerous war that we have ever had to cover but how I was treated by ABC was like the way the war itself has been sold by the US and British administrations - that you've got to keep on telling a lot of little lies to cover the big one," said Mr Gizbert after explaining his plight to the recent Annual Delegates Meeting of the National Union of Journalists at Liverpool's Adelphi Hotel.
He maintained that ABC's appeal has delayed the date for a compensation hearing to be set and left him deeply in debt.
"I'm worse than skint. In fact skint's looking pretty good to me right now," he said.
He added: "The only way the health and safety regulations provisions would have applied to me, ABC argues, is if I had accepted the assignment, flown to Baghdad taken the airport road into the city, declared the assignment too dangerous then returned to London. And then been sacked.
"It's an absurd argument." It was an emotional plea by Gizbert on what is still very much home territory.
