BAGHDAD Kidnapped U.S. reporter Jill
Carroll has been released after nearly three months in captivity, Iraq
police and the leader of the Islamic Party said Thursday. She was
reported in good condition.
She told a Washington Post reporter: "I was never hurt, ever hit...I was kept in a safe place and treated very well."
Carroll, a freelance reporter for The Christian
Science Monitor, was kidnapped on Jan. 7, in Baghdad's western Adil
neighborhood while going to interview Sunni Arab politician Adnan
al-Dulaimi. Her translator was killed in the attack about 300 yards
from al-Dulaimi's office.
"She was released this morning, she's talked to her
father and she's fine," said David Cook, Washington bureau chief of The
Christian Science Monitor.
[The news came shortly before 7 a.m., Eastern Time.
The Monitor at 7:03 a.m. posted this on its Web site: "After being held
hostage for nearly three months, Jill Carroll is free. More details
shortly."]
Police Lt. Col. Falah al-Mohammedawi said was handed
over to the Iraqi Islamic Party office in Amiriya, western Baghdad, by
an unknown group. She was later turned over to the Americans and was
believed to be in the heavily fortified Green Zone, he said.
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.
The United States Embassy in Baghdad said it could not confirm Carroll's release.
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.
Jabr said then that he believed the 28-year-old was
still alive, although the deadline set by her captors for the U.S. to
meet their demands had expired.
She was 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
night.
Carroll went to the Middle East in 2002 after being laid off from a newspaper job. She had long dreamed of covering a war.
UPDATE: Podhoretz, according to Judd Legum, wrote:
It's
wonderful that she's free, but after watching someone who was a hostage
for three months say on television she was well-treated because she
wasn't beaten or killed "while being dressed in the garb of a modest
Muslim woman rather than the non-Muslim woman she actually is" I
expect there will be some Stockholm Syndrome talk in the coming days.
I guess he would have been happier if she had allowed herself to be martyred for the cause. What a moron!
Mr.
Podhoretz, she was on Iraqi TV after having been released near an
office of the Islamic Party. Could it be that she was respecting
someone's culture and not necessarily pulling a Patty Hearst? Or is
this just the muddled thinking of a numbskull who can't separate the
entire religion of Islam from terrorism from resistance...
Regardless of John Podhoretz's insensitivity, naivete and ignorance, there is photographic proof that she has been treated better than civilians (or civilians) who were taken captive by the United States.
BAGHDAD 
