[Mb-civic] Jill Carroll released in Iraq

[Harold Sifton]

Journalist Jill Carroll Released in Iraq

By Jonathan Finer and Ellen Knickmeyer
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, March 30, 2006; 8:42 AM



BAGHDAD, March 30 -- American journalist Jill Carroll, abducted in early January by gunmen in Baghdad, was released to a Sunni Arab political party in the capital Thursday morning after 82 days in captivity.

"I was treated very well. That's important for people to know," she said in an interview with an Arabic-speaking questioner at the headquarters of the Iraqi Islamic Party. "They never hit me, they never even threatened to hit me. I'm just happy to be free, and I want to be with my family."

Carroll, 28, a freelance reporter working for the Christian Science Monitor, was brought to party headquarters just after 1 p.m. and was able to borrow a phone from a party member and speak with her parents and her twin sister. She also spoke with a Washington Post reporter, who drove to the office and spoke with her.

While Carroll was inside the party compound, U.S. military vehicles arrived, some remaining outside to provide security, others entering the main gate. She later departed with U.S. Embassy personnel.

Clad in traditional Muslim women's garb, a light gray and blue abaya and headscarf, she said in the interview that she was "happy to be free, and I want to be with my family."

She said she did not know where she had been held captive, or why her kidnappers decided to release her. "I don't know. I don't know what happened," she said in the interview, which was broadcast later in the afternoon by the Islamic Party's Baghdad TV station . "They just came to me and said, 'Okay, we're going to let you go now.' "

The young journalist's father, Jim Carroll, spoke to reporters from the porch of the family's home in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

"Obviously, we are thrilled and relieved that she has been released," he said. "We want to thank all that have supported and prayed for her. We want to especially thank The Christian Science Monitor, who did so much work to keep her image alive in Iraq."

"Unknown people," released Carroll to the Iraqi Islamic Party's branch office in Amariyah in the western part of the city, Tariq al-Hashimi, the party's secretary general, said in a telephone conversation at 12:30 p.m. local time. The party then transported her by armed convoy to its headquarters in the Yarmouk district.

"She is OK. She is safe. She is more or less scared," Hashimi said. "I told her calm down and we would take care of her."

Carroll said she spent her days sitting in a small room with one window, made opaque by curtains and frosted glass. She said she was fed well and allowed to shower whenever she wanted, but was given almost no information from the outside world.

"They didn't tell me what was going on. They would come, bring me my food, it was fine," Carroll said. "I would sit in the room. If I had to take a shower, I would walk two feet to the next door, take a shower, go to the bathroom and come back."

She said she watched television only once, and was brought a newspaper one time.

After the interview, Hashimi was shown presenting Carroll with gifts: a plaque bearing the party's emblem and a boxed copy of the Koran.

"What you have received today from the Iraqi Islamic Party is exactly the teachings of the Koran," Hashimi said, smiling. Carroll thanked him and said the copy of the Koran was beautiful.

Carroll was kidnapped Jan. 7, after arriving for an interview with Sunni politician Adnan Dulaimi in the western Baghdad neighborhood of Adil. When she left his office after Dulaimi did not show up, her car was attacked by gunmen who took her hostage. Her translator, Allan Anwiya, 29, was killed in the ambush, while her driver escaped.

In a video aired Jan. 17 on the Al-Jazeera satellite network, Carroll's captors threatened to kill her in 72 hours unless all female prisoners in American detention facilities in Iraq were released. She was shown crying and clad in a black headscarf in a second video aired without sound on Jan. 30 by a group calling itself the Vengeance Brigade.

Carroll was last seen in a Feb. 9 video broadcast on Kuwaiti television station Al-Rai. In a calm voice she asked her supporters to do whatever was necessary to gain her release and her captors gave a Feb. 26 deadline for their demands to be met.

Speaking at a news conference in Berlin, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Carroll's release "is something that people across the world have worked for and prayed for."

Her release followed a comprehensive media campaign by family members, religious and political leaders in Iraq and around the world and the Boston-based Monitor. Her parents made regular appearances on English and Arabic-language television programs and her twin sister Katie said on television Wednesday night, "We would be grateful for any new sign that Jill is well."

Kidnappings of Westerners in Iraq have grown more common in recent months. One week ago, British and U.S. soldiers freed three members of the Chicago-based advocacy group Christian Peacemaker Teams who had been abducted in late November. A fourth member of the group who was kidnapped then, Tom Fox, of Clear Brook, Va., was shot dead and dumped on a Baghdad street in early March
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