In Ambush Lasting Seconds, U.S. Reporter in Iraq Becomes Hostage

[al-Canine]

BAGHDAD, Jan. 9 -- The call came from reporter Jill Carroll's cell phone, from a young, wary-sounding Iraqi man who said he had just picked up the phone from a sprawled body on a Baghdad street. "The person this phone belongs to was just killed," the caller said.

The caller was wrong. The body was that of interpreter Allan Enwiyah, 32, who had just become one of thousands of Iraqis to be killed in nearly three years of war in Iraq.

The phone belonged to Carroll, a 28-year-old freelance reporter with hennaed hair who minutes before had become the first female American journalist to be kidnapped in Iraq.

Carried off in the Red Toyota Cressida of her driver, who escaped unharmed, she became the latest of more than 400 foreigners and more than 30 journalists to be abducted in Iraq's pitiless violence. Thousands of Iraqis have been abducted in the same period. Numerous Westerners remain in captivity, including four members of the activist group Christian Peacemaker Teams who were taken late last year.

"All together, it didn't take 10 seconds," Carroll's driver said Monday night, two days after she was kidnapped in a west Baghdad neighborhood seen as heavily sympathetic to insurgents.

"I always talked to her, told her Iraq is a place where reporters don't feel comfortable now," the driver said. "She always said, 'No, if there is a place I feel comfortable in, it's Iraq.' "

Carroll, a native of Michigan, was on assignment for the Christian Science Monitor, a Boston-based daily newspaper that has long carried extensive overseas coverage. Carroll had come to the Middle East in October 2002 and reported for Jordanian, Italian and American news organizations, including for The Washington Post in Baghdad for a few weeks in early 2003.

Carroll's kidnapping occurred in the same part of Baghdad as that of Margaret Hassan, an aid official believed killed by her abductors in 2004. Numerous foreign men have been killed by their kidnappers since 2003; of the several Western women who have been kidnapped, Hassan is the only one believed to have died at the hands of her captors. Iraqi officials say as many as 30 Iraqis a day are reported kidnapped in Baghdad. The abductions are part of the rising lawlessness accompanying the country's political unrest. Some Iraqi hostages are freed for ransom gathered by friends and families; others are dumped out on roads, dead.

In a statement, the Monitor called Carroll an "established journalist" experienced in the Middle East. "In recent months, the Monitor has tapped into her professionalism, energy, and fair reporting on the Iraqi scene," the newspaper said. "It was her drive to gather direct and accurate views from political leaders that took her into western Baghdad's Adil neighborhood on Saturday morning.

"The Monitor joins Jill's colleagues -- Iraqi and foreign -- in the Baghdad press in calling for her immediate and safe release," the statement said.

Monitor Editor Richard Bergenheim said in the statement: "Jill's ability to help others understand the issues facing all groups in Iraq has been invaluable. We are urgently seeking information about Ms. Carroll and are pursuing every avenue to secure her release."

Many of the foreign and Arabic news organizations with correspondents in Baghdad agreed not to immediately report the kidnapping. News organizations and authorities often attempt such news blackouts to give investigators, mediators and others a better chance of resolving a kidnapping in its early hours.

Unlike most Western reporters in Baghdad, Carroll spoke Arabic well enough to easily talk to ordinary Iraqi people and interview Iraqi officials. She had picked up the language while working as a business reporter in Jordan and, in the days before her abduction, had renewed a plea to her Iraqi interpreter and driver to speak only Arabic to her as they traveled so she could improve her fluency, colleagues said.

In a scholarship application filled out shortly before Saturday's kidnapping, Carroll outlined proposals for reporting projects in Iraq. In them, she showed a keen understanding of the country.

She wanted to spend six months of the fellowship making her Arabic better still, she wrote in the application. "In this poorly understood region, where so much is at stake, important stories are lost everyday because the foreign press corps doesn't speak Arabic," Carroll wrote. "Journalism is a public service and readers are best-served if I and the people I am writing about speak the same language."

A Westerner in jeans, T-shirts and sweaters while at her place in Baghdad, Carroll slipped out into the city and much of Iraq wearing the black, enveloping abaya and head scarf of Iraqi women. Even with her red-frame glasses, she could walk unnoticed down a Baghdad street.

With violence roiling Iraq, a sizable number of foreign reporters largely restrict themselves to armored cars shuttling between hotels and the American-controlled Green Zone. They cover American officials and the isolated authorities of the U.S.-backed Iraqi government.

Carroll went out in unarmored vehicles, without bodyguards or follow-up security cars.

On Saturday, her abductors were able to stop her car without firing a shot, her driver said.

The Washington Post is withholding his identity, as well as that of the person who received the cell phone call, for security reasons.

Carroll had gone to the office of Adnan Dulaimi, a white-haired Sunni Arab politician. Carroll believed she had a 10 a.m. appointment, colleagues said. She arrived early. Workers in the office kept her waiting 10 to 15 minutes, then told her Dulaimi was busy, the driver said.

Dulaimi denied after the kidnapping that there had been an appointment. At 10 a.m., he was at a scheduled news conference elsewhere with a secular Shiite politician, former interim prime minister Ayad Allawi.

Coming out of nowhere Saturday, clean-cut, well-dressed men with pistols swarmed Carroll's car as she left the failed interview. The ambush happened within a few hundred yards of Dulaimi's office, the driver said; he hadn't gone far enough to shift the car beyond third gear.

One attacker planted himself in the car's path, screaming at the driver to stop. The driver said he initially thought the men were guards clearing the route for a convoy going to or from the office of Dulaimi, like hundreds of armed convoys bullying their way through Baghdad daily. The driver stopped.

The men pulled the driver from the car. Cursing, one man fired a shot toward the driver where he had fallen to his hands and knees on the pavement. The rest piled into the car, with Carroll and Enwiyah still inside. The gunmen were shouting too loudly, the driver said, for him to hear anything Carroll or Enwiyah said.

Enwiyah's body was found in the same neighborhood. The Monitor said he had been shot twice in the head.

The first calls on the cell phone came within half an hour. The man on the other end said he had picked up the phone from Enwiyah's body, dumped in the Adil neighborhood. He called three or four more times, urging that someone be sent to pick up Enwiyah's body. It lay in the street for hours.

Enwiyah, a husband with young children, had that day shown a colleague a music CD by a band he once belonged to, the colleague recalled. All the other band members had since escaped to England, he told his colleague.

"I told him, 'This is your destiny,' " the colleague said. "He said, 'Yes, the most important thing is we're safe.' "

Other colleagues recalled Carroll saying something similar. "My fate is in Iraq," she told an Iraqi friend.

No public demands or assertions or responsibility have emerged in the kidnapping.

In the Adil neighborhood on Monday, graffiti made clear the sentiment toward Americans. "Get out," the words painted in English on a concrete wall declared. "We hate you."

A convoy of men in civilian BMWs and Opels made their way through traffic in the neighborhood. The men, wearing civilian clothes, openly held their Glock pistols and AK-47 assault rifles in view of other drivers. A wedding car draped in wreaths drove past, trailed by a van of clapping, singing women celebrating the union.

The quiet street where the kidnapping took place was partially blocked to traffic by broken concrete barriers. A dozen or so neatly dressed, clean-cut men in leather jackets milled together outside Dulaimi's office, the only signs of life on the street until the wedding convoy turned in to it.

© 2006 The Washington Post Company

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/09/AR2006010902078.html?

[al-Canine]

Iraqis work for release of American journalist

Kidnappers threaten to kill Jill Carroll, say U.S. must free women prisoners

NBC News and news services
Updated: 9:58 a.m. ET Jan. 18, 2006

CAIRO, Egypt - Iraqi authorities were working Wednesday to secure the release of kidnapped American journalist Jill Carroll, who was seen in a tape aired on an Arab TV station late Tuesday for the first time since her Jan. 7 abduction in Baghdad.

Al-Jazeera said the tape, a silent 20-second video showing Carroll appearing pale and tired, also included a threat to kill the 28-year-old freelance writer in 72 hours if U.S. authorities didn’t release all Iraqi women in military custody.

MSNBC.com translator Alfred Arian said the tape showed the logo of a group calling itself the Revenge Brigade. The same group claimed responsibility for a Jan. 4 kidnapping of the Iraqi interior minister’s sister, and asked for the release of female prisoners at that time too, NBC News reported on Tuesday.

Meantime, al-Jazeera would not tell AP from whom it received the tape of the kidnapped journalist, but issued a statement itself calling for Carroll’s release. A producer for the network said the tape showed Carroll sitting in front of a white background and speaking, but her voice could not be heard.

8 female prisoners
U.S. forces in Iraq confirmed on Wednesday they were holding eight women prisoners.

“We have eight females. They are being held for the same reasons as the others, namely that they are a threat to security,” said Lieutenant Aaron Henninger, a spokesman for the U.S. military detentions operation. Some 14,000 men are held at Abu Ghraib and other jails on suspicion of insurgent activity.

Separately, an Iraqi Justice Ministry official said there were a number of women among about 7,000 people being held in civilian Iraqi jails under its control, although he did not have an exact figure. All had been convicted of common crimes.

Also on Wednesday, Ali al-Khaqani, secretary of Interior Minister Bayan Jabr, told Reuters the official's sister was released and was at her home but refused to give more details, including her name, the day of her release or whether any ransom was paid.


Joint U.S.-Iraq investigation
Carroll, a reporter for The Christian Science Monitor, has not been heard from since she was grabbed Jan. 7 in one of the city’s most dangerous neighborhoods. Gunmen ambushed her car and killed her translator shortly after she left the offices of a Sunni Arab politician.

The U.S. Embassy said a joint American-Iraqi investigation is under way to try find Carroll.

“Efforts are continuing to find the American journalist,” said Gen. Hussein Kamal, the deputy interior minister in charge of domestic intelligence. “We cannot say more because of the sensitivity of the matter, but God willing the end will be positive.”

The State Department responded to the videotape on Al-Jazeera with a statement saying U.S. officials were doing everything possible to win Carroll’s freedom.

“We continue to make every effort we can, working with Iraqis and others, to see Miss Carroll is returned safe and sound,” spokesman Sean McCormack said.

Carroll’s family issued a statement Tuesday asking for her release.

“Jill is an innocent journalist and we respectfully ask that you please show her mercy and allow her to return home to her mother, sister and family,” the statement read. “Jill is a kind person whose love for Iraq and the Iraqi people are evident in her articles. ... Jill is a friend and sister to many Iraqis and has been dedicated to bringing the truth of the Iraq war to the world.”

Reaction to U.S. raid?
Richard Bergenheim, editor of the Christian Science Monitor, said of the kidnappers, “They have seized an innocent person who is a great admirer of the Iraqi people. She is a professional journalist whose only goal has been to report truthfully about Iraq and to promote understanding.”

The U.S. military raided a prominent Sunni mosque a day after Carroll was kidnapped, sparking a demonstration by hundreds of worshippers. A U.S. military official said the raid was a necessary immediate response to the kidnapping based on a tip provided by an Iraqi citizen.

The Christian Science Monitor said shortly after Carroll’s disappearance that she was “an established journalist who has been reporting from the Middle East for Jordanian, Italian and other news organizations over the past three years.”

Insurgents in Iraq have kidnapped more than 240 foreigners and killed at least 39 of them.

Carroll, who speaks some Arabic and wore a head covering while moving around Iraq, has been described by her editor as an aggressive reporter but not a reckless one.

Despite her language skills, Carroll used an Iraqi translator. The translator was slain by the kidnappers. The driver of their car escaped the attack and is now safe with his family, said David Clark Scott, the Monitor’s international news editor.

Police Maj. Falah Mohamadawi said the translator told officers just before he died that the abduction took place when he and Carroll were heading to meet a Sunni Arab political leader in the Adel neighborhood. The predominantly Sunni district is considered one of the toughest in Baghdad.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10895039/

[NYer]

Iraqi Justice Minister plays Let's Make A Deal. (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4624716.stm)

Iraq's ministry of justice has told the BBC that six of the eight women being held by coalition forces in Iraq have been released early.

The six were freed because there was insufficient evidence to charge them, a justice ministry spokesman said.

The US forces have refused to confirm the releases, but say they would not be based on any operational activities.

[NYer]

Just announced on the Tony Snow radio program, Jill Carroll has been murdered. No link as of yet.

Update: Snow just did an about face and said the story has NOT been confirmed.

[NYer]

Can Jesse Jackson be far behind? (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060121/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_journalist;_ylt=Ap0_Vp0TFc_sgnhsKuqt4e.s0NUE; _ylu=X3oDMTA2Z2szazkxBHNlYwN0bQ--)

[NYer]

US Military to release Iraqi women. (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060126/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_us_journalist) Is there a deal in the works?

[al-Canine]

http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0127/p04s01-woiq.html

Five Iraqi women are released from US custody

The Iraqi mother of a detainee offered her prayers and hope Thursday to Jill Carroll's mother.

BAGHDAD - The mother of one of five Iraqi female detainees released Thursday expressed confidence that American journalist Jill Carroll will be released soon.

"She'll be fine and she will come out very soon because she loves Iraq and she loves Iraqis, so God will never forget her," says Siham Faraj, the mother of Hala Khalid Wahid who was detained by US forces in Iraq four months ago.

But she added, "I don't think Jill Carroll's situation has anything to do with the release of my daughter, but we definitely feel her pain....

"And to her mother, I say: I know how painful it is when a daughter is detained. But don't worry, madam. Your daughter is a great woman and she will be fine."

Mrs. Faraj's 28-year-old daughter was arrested along with her son on Sept. 24 during a dawn raid by US forces on their Baghdad home.

In a video message aired on Arabic satellite channel Al Jazeera last week, Ms. Carroll's captors threatened to kill her within 72 hours unless all female detainees in Iraqi prisons were released.

The US military confirmed last week it was holding nine Iraqi women. On Thursday, however, the military said it had detained two more women and three men for alleged insurgent activities in the northern city of Mosul. Detainees are regularly freed in Iraq following reviews of their cases, a process that can take months. US officials say that Thursday's release of five women and 414 men was part of the routine procedure and not linked to Carroll's case.

Separately, the widow of an Al Jazeera staff correspondent killed in Iraq also called for Carroll's release. "Kidnapping journalists or civilians harms the good image of the [Iraqi] resistance," Dima Tahboub told Al Ghad, a Arab-language newspaper in Amman, Jordan.

Her Jordanian husband, Tareq Ayoub, was killed in April 2003 during a US air raid that struck the generator outside Al Jazeera's Baghdad bureau. She added, "The resistance has to adopt legal methods that spare civilians.... Journalists who play an objective professional role and serve their societies should be spared also."

A group of 37 Jordanian politicians, academics, and journalists also released a statement Thursday calling "the kidnapping of Carroll ... a kidnapping of one of the witnesses of the suffering of the Iraqi people."

In Iraq, two German engineers were kidnapped Tuesday, just two days after arriving in the country. Iraqi police say they were seized by men wearing Iraqi Army uniforms who slipped into the German company's complex.

Germany's Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said there had been no contact with the kidnappers.

• Staff writer Dan Murphy in Baghdad and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

[al-Canine]

Kidnapped Journalist Appears in New Video

Kidnapped U.S. Journalist Appeals for Release of Iraqi Women Prisoners in New Video

The Associated Press

CAIRO, Egypt - Al-Jazeera aired a new videotape Monday of kidnapped U.S. journalist Jill Carroll, showing her wearing a veil and weeping as she purportedly appealed for the release of women Iraqi prisoners.

The video is dated Saturday, two days after the U.S. military released five Iraqi women detainees but said it had nothing to do with the kidnappers' demands to do so.

The video had no sound, but the Al-Jazeera newscaster said Carroll appealed to the U.S. military and the Iraqi Interior Ministry to release all women in their prisons and that this "would help in winning her release."

The military had said before the release that it was holding nine Iraqi women, and it was not known when the others might be let go.

http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=1558104

[al-Canine]

Kuwaiti TV: Jill Carroll's kidnappers set 'final deadline'

Abductors say they will kill journalist if Iraqi women not freed

(CNN) -- Citing sources close to the kidnappers, Alrai Television in Kuwait reported Friday that U.S. journalist Jill Carroll's kidnappers set "a final deadline of February 26" for their demands to be met.

It would be the second deadline set by her abductors, who have repeatedly said they will kill Carroll if the United States does not release all female prisoners it has in custody in Iraq.

The kidnappers said they would be adhering to "rightful law" in killing Carroll, according to the private Kuwaiti station's chairman, Jassim Boodai.

Boodai would not reveal the source, but said the information is "fresh." (Watch Alrai head discuss the latest deadline -- 4:55)

The kidnappers said that Carroll is being held at a "safe house" in central Baghdad owned by one of the abductors and lives with a group of women with whom she is "sharing the house chores," Boodai said.

"She is in good health," he added.

In a video that appeared Thursday on the same station, Carroll said she was doing well, but urged the United States to meet her captors' demands quickly.

"I'm here. I'm fine. Please, just do whatever they want. Give them whatever they want as quickly as possible. There is very short time. Please do it fast," she said. (Watch Carroll's plea -- :40)

Carroll, who wore a hijab, or Muslim headdress, during the video also said that it was February 2. She appeared more composed than she had during a video broadcast January 30, in which she was weeping.

"I sent you a letter written by my hand that you wanted more evidence, so we're sending you this new letter now just to prove that I am with the mujahedeen," Carroll says in English on the tape.

Alrai -- which means "The Opinion" -- said Thursday it had a copy of the letter Carroll referred to and was planning to give it to authorities. The video and the letter were dropped off at the station's Baghdad office, Alrai said.

Boodai said that Friday's information came from the same sources as Thursday's tape and letter, which contains "personal information" and was handwritten by Carroll.

"Our concern is the safety of Jill Carroll, and that's why we are fully cooperating with authorities," Boodai said.

The 28-year-old freelance writer for The Christian Science Monitor was kidnapped January 7 in western Baghdad. Her Iraqi interpreter was killed, but her Iraqi driver escaped.

Boodai said Friday that the kidnappers deny having any role in the death of Carroll's translator.

Carroll, who has been reporting from the Middle East for three years, was planning to meet with Iraqi politician Adnan al-Dulaimi for an interview, but he was not there, according to The Christian Science Monitor, which interviewed her driver.

As the three attempted to drive off, their vehicle was stopped by the insurgents, the paper reported. (Full story)

Carroll's family released a statement Thursday, saying, "The family is hopeful and grateful to all those working on Jill's behalf."

The United States has released five Iraqi women prisoners since Carroll's kidnapping, but Washington said those releases had nothing to do with the kidnappers' demands. Four others are still in custody.

The most recent tape is the third on which Carroll has appeared. The first two were broadcast on the Arabic-language network Al-Jazeera. The second tape, released January 30, bore the logo of a group called Brigades of Vengeance, which has claimed responsibility for her kidnapping.

http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/meast/02/11/hostage.journalist

[al-Canine]

U.S. envoy says Iraq optimistic Carroll is alive

Khalilzad cites Interior ministry; U.S. reporter has been captive since Jan. 7

MSNBC News Services
Updated: 8:02 a.m. ET Feb. 27, 2006

WASHINGTON - American journalist Jill Carroll is alive and Iraqi authorities are optimistic about her release, U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad said Monday.

“The Ministry of Interior said that she is alive and that they have information with regard to where she might be held,” Khalilzad said in an interview with Fox News.

“The minister announced today that he is optimistic about her release,” he said.

The U.S. ambassador did not say how the Interior Ministry knew about Carroll’s well-being.

A deadline set by kidnappers holding Carroll in Iraq passed Sunday with no word.

Carroll was kidnapped on a Baghdad street Jan. 7 and her translator was killed. Muslim leaders have joined her family, friends and colleagues in calling for her release.

“We are doing all we can to help bring about her release and we’ll persist with that,” Khalilzad said.

More than 200 foreigners and thousands of Iraqis have been kidnapped since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Raids but no results

Iraqi police on Sunday conducted raids in search of Carroll.

The 28-year-old freelancer for the Christian Science Monitor was last seen in a videotape broadcast Feb. 9 by the private Kuwaiti television station Al-Rai.

Station owner Jassem Boudai said then that the kidnappers had set Feb. 26 as the deadline for U.S. and Iraqi authorities to meet their demands or they would kill her.

The kidnappers, a formerly unknown group calling themselves the Revenge Brigades, have publicly demanded the release of all women prisoners in Iraq, but Boudai indicated the group provided more specific conditions that he refused to reveal.

On Sunday, an Iraqi Interior Ministry official said an extensive search was under way for Carroll.

“Our forces raided some suspected places, but she was not there,” Maj. Falah al-Mohammedawi said. “We are watching the situation closely.”

Appeal for other hostages

Also Sunday, the Arabic-language Al-Jazeera satellite channel broadcast a tape it received from the family of another hostage, James Loney of Canada, appealing for his release and that of three colleagues abducted with him in Baghdad last November.

“James is a loving, compassionate, selfless man,” said a woman relative who appeared on the tape. She did not say what her relation to Loney is, but may have been his sister-in-law since she said her husband and his relatives were scared for their brother.

Loney was one of four members of the Christian Peacemaker Teams seized Nov. 26 in Baghdad by the previously unknown group calling itself the Swords of Righteousness Brigade. The other three are a Canadian, an American and a Briton.

Since Wednesday, Iraqi security officials have been preoccupied with the grave security crisis that erupted when two bombs destroyed the golden dome of the Askariya shrine in Samarra, which is revered by Shiite Muslims.

The destruction of the site triggered a wave of reprisal attacks against Sunni mosques and clerics and pushed the country to the brink of civil war. Stepped up security — including daytime curfews and vehicle bans in the capital — have eased tensions somewhat.

Three Iraqi journalists were slain Wednesday while covering the shrine bombing.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10704039/

[al-Canine]

Wow, what great news. :)

Reporter Freed in Iraq, 3 Months After Abduction

By KIRK SEMPLE
and DEXTER FILKINS

BAGHDAD, Iraq, March 30 —Jill Carroll, the American reporter kidnapped in Baghdad nearly three months ago, was freed Thursday, saying she spent most of her time in a small room but that she had been well treated by her captors.

Ms. Carroll, 28, was dropped off in a Sunni neighborhood in western Baghdad at midday and walked into the nearby offices of the Iraqi Islamic Party, a Sunni political group, dressed in a light-green head scarf and gray dress. From there, she was taken to the Green Zone, the heavily fortified area in central Baghdad, where the American ambassador, Zalmay Khalilzad, said she was in "good health and good spirits."

"I was treated very well; it's important people know that," Ms. Carroll said in an interview with an Iraqi, conducted in the Sunni party's offices and shown on television later in the day. "They never threatened me in any way."

"All I can say right now is I am very happy," Ms. Carroll said. "I am happy to be free and I want to be with my family."

Ms. Carroll, a freelance reporter, was kidnapped at gunpoint on Jan. 7 as she left the offices of a prominent Sunni politician. Her kidnappers had threatened to kill her. In videotapes released during her captivity, Ms. Carroll wept and pleaded for her freedom. In the interview shown Thursday, she said she was never told why she was being held. The kidnappers shot to death Ms. Carroll's Iraqi interpreter as the abduction unfolded. "They didn't tell me what was going on," she said.

The shadowy group that released Ms. Carroll, 28, said it had freed her because the American government had agreed to some of its conditions. The group, a little known outfit called the Revenge Brigade, had demanded that the United States release all Iraqi women from its prisons. In late January, the American command announced that it had freed five Iraqi female detainees, but said that the release had nothing to do with the kidnappers' demands.

In a news conference here, Mr. Khalilzad said no American officials in Iraq "entered into any arrangements with anyone" to secure Ms. Carroll's release. Four other Iraqi women were still being held in American detention centers, American officials said. Editors at The Christian Science Monitor, the American newspaper that was employing Ms. Carroll at the time of her abduction, also said they had conducted no negotiations with Ms. Carroll's kidnappers.

Ms. Carroll, who grew up in Michigan and graduated from the University of Massachusetts, was part of a small corps of intrepid young freelance reporters in Baghdad. She had learned more Arabic than many and had cultivated a keen interest in Iraqi society.

In a videotape posted Thursday on the Internet , made before her release, Ms. Carroll denounced the American presence in Iraq and praised the insurgents who were fighting here. In the video, Ms. Carroll smiled, laughed once and gestured in a seemingly relaxed manner, saying she felt guilty about being released while so many Iraqis were still suffering.

Ms. Carroll, still in captivity but apparently knowing she would be released, denounced what she described as the "lies" told by the American government and predicted that the insurgents would defeat the Americans in Iraq.

"I feel guilty. I also feel that it just shows that the mujahedeen are good people fighting an honorable fight, a good fight. While the Americans are here, the occupying forces, you know, treating the people in a very, very bad way. So I can't be happy totally for my freedom because there are people still suffering in prisons, in very difficult situations."

Ms. Carroll appeared to be seated in front of a white background, where she answered questions put to her in heavily accented English by a man standing offscreen.

These kind words for her captors were a sharp contrast to her demeanor on the videotapes made shortly after her kidnapping, in which she appeared distraught, weeping and terrified.

Ms. Carroll's apparent sympathy for her captors suggested that she was either pretending to gain her release or that, after suffering weeks of extreme duress, she had fallen under the sway of her kidnappers.

The light-green head scarf that Ms. Carroll was wearing at the time of her release, and the head scarf she wore in most of the videos shown during her captivity, is the typical dress for Iraqi women. Ms. Carroll was wearing one at the time of her abduction, in large part to conceal her identity as an American reporter on Baghdad's chaotic streets.

Dr. Alan Manevitz, a psychiatrist and trauma expert at New York Presbyterian Hospital, said it would not be surprising if she suffered from some degree of Stockholm syndrome, a condition in which hostages become sympathetic to their captors. The name comes from a bank robbery in Sweden in 1973 in which hostages were held in a vault for six days.

"It's a form of brainwashing in a deprived state where victims emotionally bond with the captors in order to survive," Dr. Manevitz said. He emphasized that he did not know Ms. Carroll and could speak about the syndrome only in general terms. "People can feel helpless and hopeless, and any small act of kindness — not killing her, giving her food, letting her have a shower — can lead to bonding with the captor." The captor, he said, becomes both tormentor and savior.

Ms. Carroll's whereabouts had been unknown since her abduction, carried out by a group of armed men who cut off her car just down the street from the offices of Adnan Dulaimi, the Sunni politician. Ms. Carroll, an accomplished swimmer, broke free of her kidnappers and was chased down the street, according to witnesses. Her interpreter, Allan Enwiyah, 32, was shot dead as he tried to make a call on his cellphone, while her driver managed to run away.

Dozens of people are kidnapped on Baghdad's streets every day—most of them for ransom — and they are often sold while in captivity from one group to another. Though she made no mention of being traded from one group to another, it was unclear on Thursday whether Ms. Carroll had been released by the same men who had captured her.

The exact motives of the group were unknown as well; some officials speculated that the kidnappers had originally grabbed Ms. Carroll in the hope of securing a ransom and began to demand the release of the Iraqi women after it seemed less probable to them that they would secure money.

In the weeks after her kidnapping, Ms. Carroll's captors released three videotapes, which showed her in increasing distress. The kidnappers' deadline passed, and there was no further word of her. On Feb. 28, Iraq's interior minister told ABC News that Ms. Carroll was still alive, that he knew who had kidnapped her and that he believed she would be released soon.

In the United States, Ms. Carroll's family reacted joyously to word of her release, as did the editors of The Christian Science Monitor.

"My cousin, Mary Beth Carroll — Jill's mother — and all of our family are delighted, thrilled and ecstatic that Jill has been released," Peter Alonzi, a cousin of Ms. Carroll's mother, said in a statement he read outside her home in Evanston, Ill. "My wish is that this joyous occasion will offer hope to all the mothers of Iraq whose children have been kidnapped. May they all be returned safely and swiftly to their mothers' arms.' "

Tariq al-Hashemi, the general secretary of the Iraqi Islamic Party, said in a news conference that Ms. Carroll walked into the office and handed officials a paper written in Arabic asking that the party help her.

Alaa Makki, another leader in the party, said Ms. Carroll seemed wary about talking about her captors.

"We asked her, 'Why did you come to the I.I.P.? Why did you choose the I.I.P.?' " he recalled. "She said, 'I really don't know.' "

He went on: "She said, 'I promised the kidnappers not to speak.' She was a little bit frightened. She was very careful. She didn't give much information."

In the interview shown on TV on Thursday, Ms. Carroll said she had been almost entirely cut off from the outside world. She did not know where she had been held, and said her room had a window but that it was obscured. She was well fed by her captors and was permitted to take showers and go to the bathroom whenever she wanted. She was able to watch TV and see a newspaper only once.

"I didn't really know what was going on in the outside world," she said.

Her release, she said, was as mysterious as her capture. "I don't know what happened," she said. "They just came to me and said, 'Okay, we're letting you go now.' "

Ms. Carroll is the only American woman to have been kidnapped in Iraq and, according to her family, was motivated by a desire to publicize the hardships facing the Iraqi people. Her story of pluck and empathy seemed to capture the public's imagination.

In addition, her plight struck close to home for many of the journalists here in Baghdad who covered it and for whom kidnapping has become one of the foremost threats.

Ms. Carroll traveled to the Middle East in 2002 with a dream of covering a war. In the American Journalism Review last year, she wrote that she moved to Jordan six months before the start of the war "to learn as much about the region as possible before the fighting began." She worked for a newspaper in Amman and took Arabic lessons.

Once in Baghdad, she began working for a number of publications, including The Christian Science Monitor. As conditions worsened for American and other Western reporters working in Iraq—and major news organizations began investing heavily in armed guards and armored cars—Ms. Carroll continued mostly on a shoestring budget. At the time of her kidnapping, she was traveling in an ordinary car, unprotected by guards.

By the time of her abduction, Ms. Carroll was a well-known face at the Hamra Hotel, the home of many Western reporters. She had grown close to Marla Ruzicka, an American aid worker, and when Ms. Ruzicka was killed in a suicide bombing in 2005, Ms. Carroll organized a memorial service for her at the Hamra.

In lighter moments, Ms. Carroll often got water polo matches going in the hotel's pool, where she usually emerged as the fiercest competitor.

Kirk Semple reported from Baghdad for this article, and Dexter Filkins from Kansas City, Mo. Denise Grady contributed reporting from New York.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/31/world/middleeast/31iraq.html?hp&ex=1143781200&en=d0bc7e037c078ffa&ei=5094&partner=homepage

[al-Canine]

Freed U.S. Journalist Carroll Says Video Comments Were Coerced

April 1 (Bloomberg) -- Jill Carroll, the American journalist who was kidnapped in Iraq and held for 82 days, said her captors forced her to make a video calling for U.S. troops to be pulled out of Iraq.

``They told me they would let me go if I cooperated,'' Carroll wrote in a statement issued today by her employer, the Christian Science Monitor. ``I was living in a threatening environment, under their control and wanted to go home alive. I agreed.''

In the nine-minute video made before her release, Carroll, 28, said her captors were good people fighting an honorable battle. She said President George W. Bush knew the war was based on lies and should remove U.S. troops immediately. In her statement today, Carroll said those are not her views.

In an interview immediately after her release with Baghdad Television, a local channel run by the Sunni Muslim Iraqi Islamic Party, Carroll said she was not threatened by her captors. She contradicted that account as well today.

``Fearing retribution from my captors, I did not speak freely,'' Carroll said in today's statement. ``In fact, I was threatened many times.''

Carroll and her Iraqi translator, Allan Enwiyah, were seized by gunmen Jan. 7 near the western Baghdad office of Adnan al-Dulemi, a Sunni politician Carroll planned to interview. Enwiyah, 32, was shot dead. Carroll was released March 30 and she was expected to return to the U.S. tomorrow.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000087&sid=adQhqFjL82yM&refer=top_world_news

[NYer]

Carroll Release: What Can We learn?

The question of whether or not Jill Carroll would survive captivity was answered this weekend with favorable results. Now the question that begs asking is: "what does the Carroll captivity teach us about our enemies?"

In short, quite a bit. (http://officersclub.blogspot.com/2006/04/carroll-release-what-can-we-learn.html)

It's important that we avoid allowing ourselves to be swept up in the joy of having Jill Carroll free and home. Using Carroll, the insurgents provided us with uncorrupted insight into the ideology that drives them, the tactics they employ, and why they employ them, an opportunity that should not be squandered.

Read the whole thing.

[al-Canine]

The blog is really great. Thanks, NYer.

Jill Carroll forced to make propaganda video as price of freedom

By Dan Murphy | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor (http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0403/p25s01-woiq.html)

CAIRO - The night before journalist Jill Carroll's release, her captors said they had one final demand as the price of her freedom: She would have to make a video praising her captors and attacking the United States, according to Jim Carroll.

In a long phone conversation with his daughter on Friday, Mr. Carroll says that Jill was "under her captor's control."

Ms. Carroll had been their captive for three months and even the smallest details of her life - what she ate and when, what she wore, when she could speak - were at her captors' whim. They had murdered her friend and colleague Allan Enwiya, "she had been taught to fear them," he says. And before making one last video the day before her release, she was told that they had already killed another American hostage.

That video appeared Thursday on a jihadist website that carries videos of beheadings and attacks on American forces. In it, Carroll told her father she felt compelled to make statements strongly critical of President Bush and his policy in Iraq.

Her remarks are now making the rounds of the Internet, attracting heavy criticism from conservative bloggers and commentators.

In fact, Carroll did what many hostage experts and past captives would have urged her to do: Give the men who held the power of life and death over her what they wanted.

"You'll pretty much say anything to stay alive because you expect people will understand these aren't your words," says Micah Garen, a journalist and author who was held captive by a Shiite militia in southern Iraq for 10 days in August 2004. "Words that are coerced are not worth dying over."

Shortly before her release, her captors - who refer to themselves as the Revenge Brigade - also told her they had infiltrated the US diplomatic compound in Baghdad, and she would be killed if she went there or cooperated with the American authorities. It was a threat she took seriously in her first few hours of freedom.

Carroll worked at the Wall Street Journal's Washington office in early 2002 when that paper's reporterDaniel Pearl was abducted and beheaded in Pakistan. "Many of her colleagues knew him and it was very emotional in the office,'' Jill told her father. "She had that memory in the back of her head while she was being threatened."

In making their last video, Mr. Carroll says her captors "obviously wanted maximum propaganda value in the US. After listening to them for three months she already knew exactly what they wanted her to say, so she gave it to them with appropriate acting to make it look convincing."

Jill Carroll will undoubtedly speak for herself once she's had time to recover from her ordeal and spend time with her family. But her friends and colleagues say she made it clear that she's no friend to those who kidnap or harm civilians.

Those who encountered Carroll in a professional context repeatedly praised her fairness and compassion, as demonstrated by some of the thousands of letters the Monitor has received in her support.

"Her professionalism and objectivity were unparalleled within the media community," Capt. Patrick Kerr, a Marine public affairs officer who got to know Carroll last December, when she spent a month with a Marine unit in Western Iraq, said in an e-mail. "I saw her in Husaybah, on the Syrian border, in early December shortly before I returned to the States. Aside from being very personable and down-to-earth, what really struck me was Jill's bravery. She seemed to fit right in with the marines and Iraqi security forces," he wrote in January.

The Monitor's editor, Richard Bergenheim, says that "none of us - except perhaps her personal friends and family - know what Jill's views are about the war in Iraq. But we do know that they did not color her reporting for the Monitor. She covered a wide spectrum of people in Iraq and that is part of what made her reporting valuable."

On the evening of March 29, her captors brought her written questions in Arabic, and asked her to translate them into English for the video. Though they promised her freedom in exchange for cooperating, she didn't believe them, as she'd been promised freedom many times in the past, she told her father.

But that evening, during the first attempt at producing the video, the power went out. They finished up the next morning, shortly before she was dropped off in a Baghdad neighborhood and pointed to the offices of the Iraqi Islamic Party (IIP), which then contacted friends and the US government.

Mr. Garen, who was forced to make a propaganda video by his own captors, says that "I said the US should 'stop the massacre' in Najaf - and they weren't my words, and I felt very uncomfortable saying them," recalls Garen. He says he tried to change some of the text he was fed but "that was very risky."

Garen's book "American Hostage," co-authored with his wife Marie-Helene, recounts his experience, and in the process of researching it he delved into the methods and motives of kidnappers, particularly ones with political agendas. "The point of taking hostages is to get them to make propaganda statements," he says. "The job of a civilian hostage... is to stay alive."

On Thursday, the International Woman's Media Foundation announced that Carroll had won its Courage in Journalism Award. Judy Woodruff of PBS and the Foundation's awards chair wrote: "Her courage and example are an inspiration to us all, especially at a time when journalists are under threat in many parts of the world, and particularly Iraq, for simply trying to cover stories vital for us all to know."

[NYer]

Arrests in the Jill Carroll Kidnapping. (http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,207556,00.html)