Mar 30, 2006 6:36 am US/Eastern

Editor: Hostage Jill Carroll Freed

Reports Say Journalist In Iraq Healthy, Talking With Family

 

 

(AP) BOSTON Hostage Jill Carroll has been freed in Iraq and is healthy, says an editor for The Christian Science Monitor.

 

Carroll's release is being reported by Iraqi police and is confirmed by an editor for The Monitor. The freelance writer for the Monitor was kidnapped in Baghdad on Jan. 7 by gunmen who killed her translator.

 

"She was released this morning, she's talked to her father and she's fine," said David Cook, a Monitor editor in Washington.

 

He said the paper had no further details immediately and just learned of her release aboug 6:15 a.m. ET.

 

The news follows a plea from Carroll's twin sister for her release on Arab television Wednesday, saying her sister is a "wonderful person" who is an "innocent woman."

 

Katie Carroll read a statement on the Al-Arabiya network, noting that there had been no word from her sister's captors in Iraq in almost two months.

 

"I've been living a nightmare, worrying if she is hurt or ill," Katie Carroll said, according to a transcript released by the Christian Science Monitor.

 

"There is no one I hold closer to my heart than my sister, and I am deeply worried wondering how she is being treated," Carroll said.

 

Jill Carroll's captors had demanded the release of all women detainees in Iraq by Feb. 26 and said Carroll would be killed if that didn't happen. That date came and went with no word about her welfare.

http://cbs4.com/topstories/topstories_story_089062046.html

Great news.

 

Hope she has a good homecoming.

great to hear that! :thumbup

wow that is fantastic news. had feared the worst for her.

and she's hot, too.

In her final video before she was released, here are some of the things she had to say:

 

"These are good people fighting an honorable fight ... the American occupiers are treating people very badly."

 

"[George Bush] knows this war was wrong, he knows it was illegal from the beginning and it was built on a mountain of lies."

 

She violated section I, article V of the UCMJ which states "I WILL MAKE NO ORAL OR WRITTEN STATEMENTS DISLOYAL TO MY COUNTRY AND ITS ALLIES OR HARMFUL TO THEIR CAUSE."

 

Hopefully she was merely forced to say these things in exchanged for being released and doesn't honestly believe it...

The report is that she was forced into making those statements.