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.
LOL.
I can't say as if I blame her but I would prefer to do it like the Italian who spit in his captors face before they shot him.
Thank you! Are all Aussie's as gracious as you? Oh, and happy Monday! :)
I'm still not convinced that she was not collaborating with them and making her story up.
Not all of them! I won't go into details. LOL!!!!
Dittos.
Don't have any idea what is the truth or not; but I sure would hate to have been in her position.
She probably has a better understanding of what went on over there than you, don't you think? Afterall, she was there for quite some time. How long were you there? I don't see anywhere where she tried to make them sound merciful. It was apparent from reading it that she didn't enjoy her stay there. While there are some real animals in Iraq, it is plausible that not all of them are cold blooded murderers. They could have been common thugs.
What, exactly is your point?
I was wondering how long it was gonna take her to "sell" her story. She probably couldn't get the price she wanted from a real publisher and chose to stay with the paper.
I still don't believe her story. And if it does turn out to be true, then this anti-american/anti-military cheerleader got what she deserved.
as with the Nick Berg story, we will never know what the full truth is on this one.
Silly me. I thought this was Jon Carroll.
"They'd given me a new hijab (headscarf), a new name (Aisha), and tried to convert me to Islam,"
Good thing these people are really stupid...
She just doesn't say they succeeded!!!
They let a NON MUSLIM play with their children?
Say what????
And at one point treated her to meal like a she was an honored guest?
I guess they would do that for a new convert to Islam.
Right!!! I would think more of her if she said she had pretended to convert Islam to save her life. I think she did convert. Remember lying to infidels is not a sin in Islam... it is expected.
I would not trust her any farther than I could throw her.
Well, I'll sure mind my P's and Q's then. I dread the thought of being croc bait. ;)
"I bet you call yourself a Christian."
What does being a Christian have to do with this?
Yeah right, where have you been? She is an anti war activist and was open about that before she went there. I don't believe her story for a minute. I believe the troops and family that have come back from there. Her story just doesn't add up.
It is NOT a religion of peace. It is a pagan worship of death, not of life, nor hope.
There are many, many others who should be croc bait first...
"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. "
If that doesn't prove there is something VERY wrong with Oprah's show I don't know what will. Terrorists LOVE her.
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