Journalist begs for freedom

2006-01-31 19:26

Dubai - Kidnapped United States journalist Jill Carroll made a harrowing appeal for her release in a video from an Iraqi militant group broadcast by the Arab news channel Al-Jazeera on Monday.

It was not possible to make out the exact words of Carroll, who was pictured wearing a white headscarf covering her neck and shoulders, in tears and pleading in clear emotional distress.

Al-Jazeera's reported: "The journalist called on her family, her colleagues and Americans throughout the world to ask the US military authorities and the Iraqi interior ministry to free all Iraqi prisoners, saying this could contribute to her release."

Her appearance contrasted with a previous video released on January 17, which showed a more subdued Carroll, 28, wearing a grey sweatshirt with her long brown hair loose.

Video 'too disturbing'

The video was widely reported in the US, but television stations refused to broadcast more than a few seconds of it, calling it too disturbing.

The Christian Science Monitor, the newspaper Carroll was working for as a freelancer when she was abducted, expressed deep concern on Monday over her fate.

Monitor's editor Richard Bergenheim said: "Anyone with a heart will feel distressed that an innocent woman like Jill Carroll would be treated in the manner shown in the latest video.

"We add our voice to those of Arabs around the world, and especially to those in Iraq, who have condemned this act of kidnapping.

"We ask that she be returned to the protection of her family immediately."

Captors threaten to kill Carroll

Armed men who shot dead her interpreter abducted Carroll on January 7 in Baghdad. She had visited the office of a prominent Sunni political figure, Adnan al-Dulaimi, whom she hoped to interview.

According to Al-Jazeera, the new video, dated January 28, was the first news of Carroll since a tape broadcast on January 17 in which her captors threatened to kill her if women prisoners in Iraq were not released.

While US and Iraqi authorities refused to free any prisoners to placate Carroll's kidnappers, more than 400 Iraqi detainees, including five women, were released last week in what the authorities said followed normal reviews.

Spike in hostage-taking

But, another four women were still held in US-administered prisons.

A freelance journalist, Carroll set out to learn Arabic and cover the Iraq conflict in 2002, moving to Jordan. In 2003, she arrived in Baghdad and later began writing regularly for the Boston-based Christian Science Monitor.

Her parents and US officials had made impassioned calls for her release.

The new tape came amid a new spike in hostage taking in Iraq, with insurgents releasing tapes of several foreign captives for the past days.

A group holding captive four Western peace activists in Iraq since November, last week issued a new video of their captives, saying it was giving a "last chance" for its demands to be met.

- AFP