Freed reporter says forced into propaganda video

Jill Carroll in Baghdad after her release. Picture / Reuters

BOSTON - Describing her captivity in Iraq as horrific, freed American hostage Jill Carroll has disavowed critical statements she made about the United States, saying she had been forced into making a propaganda video.

"During my last night in captivity, my captors forced me to participate in a propaganda video," she said in a statement read by Richard Bergenheim, editor of The Christian Science Monitor, the Boston-based newspaper where she worked when she was abducted in Baghdad on January 7.

"They told me they would let me go if I cooperated. I was living in a threatening environment, under their control, and wanted to go home alive. I agreed," she said.

"Things that I was forced to say while captive are now being taken by some as an accurate reflection of my personal views. They are not," she added in the statement made while she was in Germany two days after being freed in Baghdad.

In the video posted on a jihadist website that also showed videos of beheadings and attacks on American forces, Carroll denounced the US presence in Iraq, praised the militants fighting American forces there and predicted the insurgents would defeat the Americans.

In her statement on Saturday, she described her 82 days in captivity as "horrific" for her and her family, and thanked her supporters around the world for rallying on her behalf after she was kidnapped by Islamic militants who also killed her Iraqi interpreter.

- REUTERS