Corrected: Jill Carroll, the freelance journalist for the Christian Science Monior is released by her captors to members of a leading Islamic party in Baghdad. Says the WaPo:
Journalist Jill Carroll Released in Iraq
By Jonathan Finer and Ellen Knickmeyer Washington Post Foreign Service Thursday, March 30, 2006; 8:09 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 never hurt, never hit," she said in an interview with an Arabic-speaking questioner at Islamic Party headquarters. "I was kept in a safe place and treated very well."
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 transported her back to U.S. officials in Baghdad's fortified Green Zone.
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.' "
"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 room with one window, which she could not see through because the glass was opque. She "walked two feet" to the shower, she said, and had almost no information from the outside world, watching television only once.
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, as Carroll thanked him.
The CSMonitor editor had this to say after Carroll's release:
Monitor editor Richard Bergenheim said, "this is an exciting day, we couldn't be happier. We are so pleased she'll be back with her family. The prayers of people all over the world have been answered."
They've also got great pics of Carroll and her twin sister, plus the sister's plea via Arab TV this week for her sister's freedom here.
Good for Ms. Carroll, who is one of the hundreds of journalists -- Western and Iraqi -- who are risking their lives to inform the rest of us about what's going on in Iraq.
Meanwhile, NBC reports on what it calls a deadly shift in the war in Iraq, with organized crime, attacks on businesses, and kidnappings becoming a frequent occurrence in that country. Needless to say, Carroll -- who had the advantage of speaking Arabic and being a sympathetic figure to the Arab side (though that did't help Margaret Hassan or Tom Fox...) is very, very lucky to be alive.
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"[T]he practice of arbitrary imprisonments, have been, in all ages, the favorite and most formidable instruments of tyranny.' Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 84, August, 1788
