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.
Daniel Pearl
Then perhaps you and others should start a petition to get this woman tried for murder. Afterall, what you are saying seems to be that she was part of a plan to kill her translator as well. Otherwise, how do you get past the fact her translator was shot and killed in cold blood.
Amen to that.
If we don't see a full denunciation and call for the destruction of these barbarians during this "11 part series", then we know for sure.
Did you read the article?
Yeah, ... like her translator wasn't killed in cold blood.
They were nice to him because they shot him instead of the usual beheading.
OK, I'm starting a new "thing" here at FR. It's called the "Floyd R. Turbo" award. I'll be presenting it to those who claim to know what they're talking about, when it fact, it appears as though they had not read the referenced article. Johnny Carson invented Floyd, called him an ignoramus.
So everyone in Iraq is an evil murderer and there is not way someone could abduct someone and let them live? What doesn't add up? Maybe her anti-war views are why they let her live.
I guess you're right. You should be a detective or something.
. . .looking for the sarc tag. . .
She admits they tried to convert her to ISLAM. That was after they killed her translator. That was after they captured her.
There are just two reasons Muslims have released those persons they have captured. The first is the payment of a very large bribe. Kidnapping of infidels to get money is approved in the Koran. The second method approved by the Koran is if the person converts to Islam. Then they are to be treated like a brother or sister.
However if a person is offered conversion and does not convert, then the Koran calls for such persons to be put to death.
Either these Muslims believed in the KORAN or they did not. The fact she admitts they tried to convert her says they do. Because if they didn't get a bribe and they didn't kill her then according to the Koran they commiteed a mortal sin.
From the fairly brief article:
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"I'm starting to wonder if the entire web page just isn't loading for some people.
Even if in, perhaps, just a figurative sense. It's like the words get read, flitter about, then die a horrible lonely death in some synaptic back ally.
These kidnappers grabbed other hostages?!? Source?
I read the whole article. Jill Carroll still is anti-american/anti-military. Frankly, I don't care how well or how bad she claims they treated her (as she states in the article). IMO, if her story is indeed true, then she got what she deserved after speaking out against our troops.
Story> She said she was threatened many times by her captors, whom she described as "criminals at best".
???
What part of Iraq were you in?
She's a journalist, so I begin with the assumption that she is lying.
I bet you call yourself a rational human being.
She went through a horrific ordeal, and I'm glad she survived. No matter what she had to say to save her life she did what any one of us would have done. She has since recanted what they forced her to say, and told the truth about what happened. I wish her the best.
Would you like to be approached on this forum with an equivalent challenge ?
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