“Hi, Dad. This is Jill. I’m released.” Those words roused Jim Carroll from sleep in his North Carolina home at about 6 a.m. Thursday and made his day.
Although much about journalist Jill Carroll’s kidnapping remains puzzling, the fact that she was released unharmed is some of the best news to come out of Iraq recently. Jill Carroll, of course, is the freelancer working for the Christian Science Monitor who was kidnapped Jan. 7 while on the way to interview Sunni politician Adnan al-Dulaimi. Her translator was killed in the attack, for which a previously unknown group called Revenge Brigades took credit. Two videos, in which her death was threatened, were released.
The Associated Press reported that Carroll, who had been in seclusion with her parents and twin sister since she arrived in Boston on Sunday, met with the staff of The Monitor on Monday, visiting the newsroom of the paper that hired her a week after she was taken captive in Iraq.
The choice to kidnap Carroll, who had made it something of a personal mission to understand and explain sympathetically to Americans about all factions in Iraq, seemed odd at the outset. Since her release she has said she was kept in a furnished room with a shower and was not harmed. She says she doesn’t know why her captors decided to release her. The Monitor and U.S. authorities say no ransom was paid, and the U.S. military was not involved in the release.
It would be nice to have these and other questions answered. It is even nicer to know that Jill Carroll is free and is again able to spend time with her family.
