Posted on 08/13/2006 5:09:50 PM PDT by Aussie Dasher
CERTAIN she would be murdered by the men who kidnapped her on a Baghdad street and fatally shot her translator, American journalist Jill Carroll begged her captors at one point to use a gun to end her life rather than a knife.
"Promise me you will use this gun to kill me by your own hand. I don't want that knife, I don't want the knife, use the gun," Carroll remembered crying hysterically to the Iraqi man who was watching her with a 9mm pistol at his side.
For the first time since she returned to the United States in April, Carroll has described her chilling, 82-day experience as a hostage in Iraq.
The Christian Science Monitor, the newspaper for which Carroll reported from Baghdad and now works as an editor in Boston, published the first installment of her 11-part series overnight on the newspaper's website.
Carroll, who was snatched on January 7 after trying to interview a Sunni politician, described how a sunny Saturday morning turned deadly as a group of men pointed their pistols at her and gunned down her friend and translator Alan Enwiya.
The men surrounded the 28-year-old reporter, shouted "Jihad! Jihad! Jihad!" and sped away on Baghdad's main road, according to the account.
Carroll wrote she was later grilled about how many American reporters lived in Baghdad and accused of working with US intelligence agents.
When Carroll asked her captors to shoot her instead of killing her with a knife, she said she had been held for six weeks.
"They'd given me a new hijab (headscarf), a new name (Aisha), and tried to convert me to Islam," she wrote.
As days turned to months, Carroll, who speaks Arabic and moved to Iraq to fulfill a dream of being a foreign correspondent, said she was interrogated, but, at times, was given a remote control to a television set where she watched the The Oprah Winfrey Show.
She said her captors also let her play with their children.
At one point, she said they served her from a platter of chicken and rice "that would have been fit for an honoured guest".
"We have no problem with you. Our problem is with your government," her captors told her as they prepared to release tapes of the journalist wearing a headscarf and weeping.
When Carroll first returned to the United States, she described her captivity as a horrific ordeal in a cave-like room sealed off from the world. She said she was threatened many times by her captors, whom she described as "criminals at best".
Just before her release, Carroll said she was forced by her captors to make a video in which she denounced the US presence in Iraq and praised the militants fighting American forces there. Carroll later disavowed those comments.
Carroll's parents and twin sister kept a public face on her ordeal through frequent, emotional appeals for her release on US and Arabic television.
On Thursday, the US military said it arrested four Iraqis suspected of being involved in Carroll's abduction.
I am not in the slightest interested in anything concerning this person.
I bet you call yourself a Christian.
Ditto
except you did read the post and respond :)
I don't believe a word of it. She is trying to make them out to be merciful, too bad too many others didn't fare as 'well' as she did.
Inhuman bastards....making a defenseless woman watch Oprah. That's gotta be a war crime.
L
I'm sure you probably regret your comment by now. I'm sure there are a few posters here on FR who will step up and apologize for some of the comments made when she was still in capitivity. I'm glad she's home safe.
She is lucky she got out with her head. I wonder why she did?
...he said as he replied to this article about her
>>The Oprah Winfrey Show.
Load of crap. She's just saying that so that she can get on Oprah.<<
That would make perfect sense except she is only doing one interview. Now, a cynical person might suggest that's because she's working on a movie deal and doesn't want to give too much for free.
What comment do you reckon I should regret?
That's what I was thinking. This is a strange story. They didn't treat other hostages this way.
I'm so sorry, Aussie Dasher. My comment was meant for Publius6961. Please accept my apology.
We released a few jihadi women from prison and someone paid a ransom.
Quote of the month! Ha! LOL!
Not a worry!!!
It's Monday morning Down here. I could fall for anything...
:-)
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