Posted on 04/01/2006 2:57:46 AM PST by SkyPilot
RAMSTEIN AIR BASE, Germany - Smiling broadly, journalist Jill Carroll arrived Saturday under U.S. military protection in Germany, the first stop on her return to the United States after 82 days in captivity in Iraq.
28-year-old U.S. journalist Jill Carroll, left, is welcomed by Base Commander, Col. Kurt Lohide after she landed at the U.S. Airbase in Ramstein, southwestern Germany, Saturday, April 1, 2006. Carroll was a hostage in Iraq for 82 days and was released last Thursday. (AP Photo/Michael Probst)
Gone was the Islamic headscarf and dress robe she had worn as a hostage. Instead she was wearing jeans, a bulky gray sweater, and a desert camouflage jacket.
Col. Kurt Lohide, commander of the 435th Air Base Wing, welcomed her to Ramstein.
"I'm happy to be here," she said.
Carroll, a 28-year-old freelancer for the Boston-based Christian Science Monitor, was seized Jan. 7 in western Baghdad by gunmen who killed her Iraqi translator.
She was dropped off Thursday at an office of the Iraqi Islamic Party, a Sunni Arab organization, and later escorted by the U.S. military to the Green Zone, the fortified compound in Baghdad protecting the U.S. embassy and other facilities. She was said to be reluctant to go to the Green Zone because her kidnappers had told her it was infiltrated by insurgents.
A U.S. Air Force C17 Globemaster brought Carroll from Balad Air Base near Baghdad to Ramstein Air Base in western Germany. Carroll was seated in the cockpit of the plane, which was also carrying several soldiers wounded in Iraq.
As the aircraft came to stop, she cast a bemused look at the bevy of television cameras waiting on the tarmac. That expression had changed to a big grin, though, by the time she got off the plane.
She was wearing the usual Western garb _ jeans and sneakers _ and carrying a flight bag. Her hair _ uncovered _ was pulled back in a ponytail. As journalists watched from a distance, Lohide escorted her to a waiting van.
Ramstein officials said she was taken to a hotel at the air base but was expected to leave for Boston later Saturday on a flight out of Frankfurt.
After she was gone, the wounded soldiers were brought out of the rear of the plane on stretchers for transport to the U.S. military's Landstuhl Regional Medical Center.
It wasn't clear why the kidnappers, who called themselves the Revenge Brigades, released Carroll. They had demanded the release of all female detainees in Iraq by Feb. 26, and said Carroll would be killed if that wasn't done.
U.S. officials did release some female detainees at the time, but said it had nothing to do with the kidnappers' demands. On Thursday, U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad said the United States is still holding four women.
Carroll has said her kidnappers confined her to a small, soundproof room with frosted windows but treated her well. Although her captors issued televised threats to kill her if American forces did not release women prisoners, she said she was never threatened or harmed.
On Friday a video posted on an Islamist Web site showed her speaking out against the U.S. military presence.
"Tens of thousands ... have lost their lives here because of the occupation," she said in the video. "I think Americans need to think about that and realize day-to-day how difficult life is here."
She said the insurgents were "only trying to defend their country ... to stop an illegal and dangerous and deadly occupation."
The Monitor's editor, Richard Bergenheim, said that Carroll's parents, who spoke to her about the video, told him it was "conducted under duress."
She could be all of 18 years old in this pic. Her entire demeanor changed. In these new pics when she is free, she is wearing more stylish red glasses, red lipstick, and a truly happy expression--total comfort with her male American soldier by her side. In other words, safe at last. I await her own explanation now that she's free.
The photo is immediately after she was "kidnapped." She put on a lot of weight during her "captivity."
I have no idea what the facts are. And guess what? Neither do you. Let's wait for a press conference or interview on American soil.
Until then, I think I'll refrain from suggesting that she be killed.
I see per drudge I was wrong about her. I stand corrected.
You and the others were correct.
I have yet to hear any evidence that this kidnapping was not genuine. Why does everyone quickly not believe this woman?
That theory means little when we have video-taped beheadings and other prisoner abuse stories on record. So, they treated this one OK, they still toook her agaisnt her will & held her prisoner. I don't care if they broguht her roses every day, she couldn't leave. 1/3 of all foreign hostages are killed. Remember Daniel Pearl.
This French Journalist had a different take:
http://www.time.com/time/europe/hero2005/aubenas.html
There are 2 Iriaqi reporters that have been taken hostage also.
"For the first time in the two months since gunmen snatched their colleagues Marwan Ghazal and Reem Zaeed off the streets of Baghdad, the journalists and the management received a hopeful sign that maybe their terrible ordeal might come to a happy ending as well.
"We were all so excited to see Jill Carroll released," Maroun Moukarzel, the business manager for the Lebanese-owned satellite network said in his office Friday. "We are hoping that maybe she knows something about Marwan and Reem."
Ghazal and Zaeed, both reporters with Iraqi nationality and two of three journalists who remain captive in Iraq, were abducted Feb. 1 near the Iraqi Islamic Party's western Baghdad office.
Two cameramen were with the reporters, but the gunmen left them behind. One of the cameramen asked to be taken in place of Reem, a 23-year-old woman and budding television reporter who came to the network about seven months ago after working for a local newspaper, but the gunmen refused, according to Moukarzel.
But unlike Carroll's case, in which her captors put her on television days after her capture and threatened to kill her if their demands were not met, there has been no word of Ghazal and Zaeed.
"We have received no phone calls, no demands for ransom," Moukarzel said. "There has been absolutely nothing. We have no idea even who these people that took them are."
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0604010105apr01,1,6972048.story?page=1&coll=chi-newsnationworld-hed
From the Drudge linked article:
"In a video, recorded before she was freed and posted by her captors on an Islamist Web site, Carroll spoke out against the U.S. military presence. But Carroll said the recording was made under threat. Her editor has said three men were pointing guns at her at the time.
"During my last night in captivity, my captors forced me to participate in a propaganda video. They told me I would be released if I cooperated. I was living in a threatening environment, under their control, and wanted to go home alive. So I agreed," she said in a statement read by her editor in Boston.
"Things that I was forced to say while captive are now being taken by some as an accurate reflection of my personal views. They are not."
What a shame she had to fly on an EVIL American military plane! Those Air Force guys have strong stomachs.
Thanks ThirstyMan. When you f up as much as I do, you get a lot of practice retracting stuff ;-P
Don't start feeling too lonely there, Huck.
I do my fair share of the f'ing up and not nearly enough of the other. :-)
But, I suspect Carroll's repudiation will not be enough for those who've invested so much of their feelings in rancorous suspicion and accusation.
Will be interesting to watch and read what comes out over the next few days, here and elsewhere.
Racehorse, hard to understand the uncaring vitriol that this lady has generated among our "friends" here at FR. I've never seen anything like it. It's an uninformed patriotism. Makes me feel like I don't belong here even though I am a patriot.
I felt WAY more angry at those three "peace activist" stooges who were rescued from captivity last week. Not a "thank you" or a good word to say about their rescuers from one of them. We were just dished up a disgusting dose of anti-American rhetoric.
Now THOSE GUYS fried my butt! not this damaged goods, Jill Carroll.
They should have made her wait to deplane, until her betters were taken off, put in ambulances, and taken to the hospital.
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