Hostage Jill Carroll Released

[JudyLynne]

American hostage Jill Carroll freed in Iraq

MSNBC News Services
Updated: 10:46 a.m. ET March 30, 2006

BAGHDAD, Iraq - American reporter Jill Carroll, who was kidnapped three months ago in a bloody ambush that killed her translator and later appeared in videotapes pleading for help, was released Thursday, telling the world that she was “just happy to be free.”
“I just want to be with my family," Carroll told Baghdad Television.
Carroll, 28, said she was treated well but was never told why she was kidnapped.
“I was treated well, but I don’t know why I was kidnapped,” Carroll said. The captors “never hit me ... They never said they would hit me.”
She was wearing an light green Islamic headscarf, a gray Arabic robe and looked well.
Carroll said she was kept in a comfortable room and could wash easily but could not move beyond the immediate confines of her accommodation. She was allowed to watch TV once and read a newspaper once.
‘Didn’t know what would happen’
“I felt I was not free. It is difficult because I didn’t know what would happen to me,” she said.
Asked about the circumstances of her release, she said, “They just came to me and said we’re going. They didn’t tell me what was going on.”
U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad met with Carroll and said she was in good spirits and anxious to go home. He also said no kidnappers were “yet” in custody, and no one in the U.S. mission was involved in paying a ransom.
Carroll was dropped off near the Iraqi Islamic Party offices Thursday afternoon. She walked inside, and people there called American officials, Iraqi police said.
Carroll’s family said they were elated at news of her release. Her father, Jim, said at his house in Chapel Hill, N.C., that he was waiting to learn more about his daughter before making travel plans to reunite with her.
“Obviously, we are thrilled and relieved that she has been released,” he said on the porch of his home. “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.”
President Bush said he was “really grateful she was released” and thanked those “who worked so hard for her release. I’m glad she’s alive.”
Held for nearly 3 months
Carroll, a freelance reporter for the Christian Science Monitor and other publications, was kidnapped on Jan. 7, in Baghdad’s western Adil neighborhood while going to interview Sunni Arab politician Adnan al-Dulaimi. Her translator, Allan Enwiyah, was killed in the attack about 300 yards from al-Dulaimi’s office.
Her captors, calling themselves the Revenge Brigades, had demanded the release of all women detainees in Iraq by Feb. 26 and said Carroll would be killed if that didn’t happen. The date came and went with no word about her welfare.
On Feb. 28, Iraq’s Interior Minister Bayan Jabr said Carroll was being held by the Islamic Army in Iraq, the insurgent group that freed two French journalists in 2004 after four months in captivity.
She was previously last seen in a videotape broadcast Feb. 9 by the private Kuwaiti television station Al-Rai. Her twin sister, Katie, issued a plea for her release on Al-Arabiya television late Wednesday.
Fulfilling a dream
Carroll went to the Middle East in 2002 after being laid off from a newspaper job. She had long dreamed of covering a war.
In the American Journal Review last year, Carroll wrote that she moved to Jordan in late 2002, six months before the war started, “to learn as much about the region as possible before the fighting began.”
“There was bound to be plenty of parachute journalism once the war started, and I didn’t want to be a part of that,” she wrote.
Carroll has had work from Iraq published in the Monitor, AJR, U.S. News & World Report, an Italian news wire and other publications. She has been interviewed often on National Public Radio.
Carroll is the fourth Western hostage to be freed in eight days. On March 23, U.S. and British soldiers, acting on intelligence gained from a detainee, freed Briton Norman Kember, 74, and Canadians James Loney, 41, and Harmeet Singh Sooden, 32, from a house west of Baghdad.
The three belonged to the Christian Peacemakers Teams group and had been kidnapped with an American colleague, Tom Fox, 54, on Nov. 26. Fox was killed and his body was dumped in western Baghdad on March 9.
Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report

[scotto]

This is GREAT news...

[jonathan_ddr]

Yes it was good news especially when she tells you she was not mistreated in any way.