Posted on 01/18/2006 9:07:26 AM PST by jimbo123
Iraq's ministry of justice has told the BBC that six of the eight women being held by coalition forces in Iraq have been released early.
The six were freed because there was insufficient evidence to charge them, a justice ministry spokesman said.
The US forces have refused to confirm the releases, but say they would not be based on any operational activities.
The group holding US journalist Jill Carroll has said she will die unless all Iraqi women prisoners are freed.
The status of prisoners held by coalition forces is reviewed twice a week by a committee made up of the justice, human rights and interior ministries, and a representative of the US-led coalition.
The justice ministry spokesman said it was this committee which had studied the cases of the six women and found insufficient evidence against them.
However, the US military stressed that decisions over such matters were a detailed process that were unrelated to any other operational activity.
The demand that all Iraqi female prisoners held by coalition forces should be released was made in a video of Ms Carroll which aired on Arab TV channel al-Jazeera on Tuesday.
Her captors said the 28-year-old journalist would be killed within 72 hours if their demand was not met.
The video showed Ms Carroll apparently speaking to the camera, but did not include her voice.
Al-Jazeera did not say where it got the tape. The station itself has called for her release.
It was the first sighting of Ms Carroll since gunmen abducted her in Baghdad 10 days earlier, fatally wounding her translator during the attack.
Past demands
She is the 31st foreign journalist kidnapped in Iraq since the invasion almost three years ago, according to Reporters Sans Frontieres.
Ms Carroll has been a freelance reporter for the Christian Science Monitor newspaper, among others.
She had been reporting from the Middle East for Jordanian, Italian and other media organisations for the past three years, the Christian Science Monitor said in a statement.
The Monitor describes itself as a non-religious newspaper.
It is not the first time that the abductors of Western hostages in Iraq have called for the release of women prisoners.
In October 2004, Briton Ken Bigley and two American hostages were beheaded by members of al-Qaeda in Iraq, who had demanded female prisoners be freed.
At the time the Bush administration said that only two women were being held in Iraq - Huda Salih Mahdi Ammash, nicknamed by the US "Mrs Anthrax" and Rihab Taha, also known as "Dr Germ".
The pair were amongst a group of eight senior aides to former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein who were released in December 2005.
In November 2004, British aid worker Margaret Hassan was abducted and murdered in Iraq. Before her death she appeared in a similar hostage video calling for foreign troop withdrawals and the release of women prisoners.
Bad precedent, if true.
hope they have homing devices implanted up their butts
Right you are. If this is accurate, the kidnappings should rise quickly. And that ain't good.
Bad precedent? Maybe, but these women were captured by "westerners". Releasing them to their men is a virtual death sentence. And it is cheaper than randsoming that lovely girl as most European nations have done with their hostages. I'd put it in the "null effect" column.
Reminds me of how a couple of airplane hijackings in the late '70s emptied out European prisons of jihadists.
The damned thing is that Ms Carrol has that All-American thing and look about her that could really destroy public opinion over the war if she was killed and then had a taped release, now we have to live with the evil to come over more kidnappings and more demands. Pickle it is, I hope our guys made the right decision.
Heard it in Iraq a few hours ago.
Hmm, where does it say they got out early, weren't scheduled to be released, etc.? For all we know, they were going to release them anyway.
Never give in to the terrorists. So now what's going to happen? The Islamobutchers going to set their hostage free? I don't think so...
I suppose the terrorists wanted the women released so they could use them as homocide bombers. No sense in wasting a perfectly good man for that type of work, when useless women are available.
Certainly not from where I'm sitting. ;-P
I'm sorry Jill Carroll got abducted, but she shouldn't have been gallivanting around Baghdad as if it's New York City. I have a hard time garnering sympathy for someone who does boneheaded things like that.
ping
Agreed
No, be sure they will be made an example of in the form of honour killings. They screwed up and got caught. They do not deserve to wear the "vest of paradise".
"It's not paranoia if they're really after you."
If the muslamofascist pigs hurt that all American looking gal
I dont know if that would lessen America's will to fight...
I would say...lets go thermobaric on the bass turds myself...
And then take out Iran, Syria, Lebanon, and Saudi Arabia
while we are at it.
Agree fully, but she's young and lovely and the left needs a poster child. Cindy Sheehan just didn't work out for them.
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