Iraq party's surprise visit as hostage Jill Carroll freed

Jill Carroll is seen speaking to Baghdad Television in Baghdad. Picture / Reuters

BAGHDAD - It was just after midday in Baghdad on Thursday (9pm NZT) when American journalist Jill Carroll walked into an office of a political party in a violent part of town, clutching a letter in Arabic asking for help.

Swathed in an Islamic headscarf and visibly well after three months as a hostage, the 28-year-old reporter was whisked inside by astonished staff of the Iraqi Islamic Party, before media colleagues and US officials were called to come and fetch her.

The account of her appearance came from the party's leader.

Iraqi and US officials denied any negotiations took place to secure her release, a week after three Western Christian peace activists were rescued by special forces the city. The US ambassador thanked Iraqi leaders for their help, however.

Carroll herself told Islamic Party leader Tareq al-Hashemi, whose moderate Sunni group had urged her release, that she did not know who kidnapped her, but said she had been well treated and described her captors as "mujahideen" - Islamic militants.

She had only found out she was being freed that morning.

"Our brothers ... were surprised when a women in Islamic dress came into their office, introduced herself as Jill Carroll and gave them a letter in Arabic asking for the IIP's help in delivering her to the responsible authorities," Hashemi said.

The office was in Amriya, a stronghold of Sunni insurgents fighting US occupation. It was after an appointment at another Sunni political organisation that Carroll was seized on January 7 by gunmen who shot dead her Iraqi translator.

The incident, three weeks after an election raised hopes of an end to Sunni isolation, embarrassed moderate Sunni leaders and prompted calls for the release of the journalist. Her reports for the Christian Science Monitor and others, they said, showed her care for the sufferings of Iraqis since the war.

"Never hit me. Never even threatened to hit me," Carroll told Hashemi's television channel, describing decent food and furniture, clean clothes and the small room with bathroom and a single frosted window where she was held for three months.

"It was quite a wake-up call," her father Jim Carroll said of getting news of her release before dawn. "She's in good health and mentally strong. We had a fantastic conversation."

"Thank God," said President George W. Bush when told of the news, underlining the popular interest in the United States in a kidnap that is one of many thousands in Iraq in recent years.

Carroll's editor Richard Bergenheim said the Monitor would not forget captive Iraqis: "The world doesn't hear their voices or the voices of their families. They deserve attention and their freedom no less than Jill." Two Kenyans and two Germans are also still missing in Iraq.

Iraqis expressed a mixture of appreciation that Carroll was free with irritation that their own problems got less attention.

"Our government ... made a lot of noise about Carroll but not a single official spoke about Iraqi detainees," said Baghdad shopkeeper Amir Abdulzahra, 42.

But Khairi Mahi, 47, said: "This should have happened a while ago. She was doing a humanitarian service, not carrying a gun." "I'm just happy to be free. I just want to be with my family," Carroll told Baghdad television, still wearing a headscarf similar to one she wore in video footage made by her captors in which she called for the release of women prisoners.

Several were freed in January but the US and Iraqi authorities insisted it was coincidence. Four remain in custody.

As a woman in Muslim culture, some observers had thought her chances of survival were better than that for an American man -- but it did not save Irish aid worker Margaret Hassan in 2004.

After a first video showed her looking distressed, by the time of a third film she appeared more comfortable. With some ability in Arabic, she may have been able to do as some other captive journalists have done and won her jailers' confidence.

"They gave me clothing. Plenty of food. I was allowed to take showers, go to the bathroom when I wanted," Carroll said.

One insurgent group released a video last week saying it was "watching" journalists but would free those, like two Frenchmen seized in 2004, who it believed were genuine. It said it had killed Italian Enzo Baldoni that same year because he was a spy.

Presenting Carroll with a Koran after her television appearance, party leader Hashemi told her in English: "Don't forget the Iraqi people." He later insisted his party had played no other part in the kidnapping or any negotiations.

Monitor editor Bergenheim said: "There have been people all over the world working night and day to obtain this result.

"Jill's fellow journalists, her good friends in Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East, the Iraqi and American governments. Leading clerics throughout the Arab world and political leaders in Iraq have pursued every avenue possible."

- REUTERS