It's all over the news now, American reporter, Jill Carroll, has been freed after 3 months of being kidnapped on January 7th in Baghdad. Jill's translator was killed in the ambush. Jill is a freelance reporter for the Christian Science Monitor. A group referred to as the "Revenge Brigades" took responsibility for the kidnapping. Jill, who reports now that she was not harmed throughout the ordeal, was released near an office of the Iraqi Islamic Party, the main Sunni political organization, in western Baghdad. She reportedly came into the office carrying a letter written in Arabic asking for help. Carroll has stated that she is unsure what changed or why they decided to let her go. She said that they came into her early in the morning and told her, "Ok, we are letting you go now." She also has made it clear that she was treated well by her captors.
This does seem somewhat strange, for those of us that remember that her captors had demanded the release of all women detainees in Iraq by Feb. 26, and said Carroll would be killed if that did not happen. The Feb. 26th date came and went with no word about Jill or if they had killed her or what had happened to her. On Februsry 28th, Iraq’s Interior Minister Bayan Jabr had said that Carroll was being held by the Islamic Army in Iraq. Also, in the past three months, she had appeared in three different video broadcasts on Arab television, pleading for her life.
It had been reported that a large ransom had been demanded in exchange for Jill's release, yet U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad has made it known that no one in the U.S. mission was involved in paying a ransom, and that no kidnappers had been taken into custody.
Jill Carroll is the fourth Western hostage to be freed in eight days. On March 23, U.S. and British soldiers, acting on intelligence gained from a detainee, freed Briton Norman Kember, 74, and Canadians James Loney, 41, and Harmeet Singh Sooden, 32, from a house west of Baghdad. The three had been kidnapped with an American colleague, Tom Fox, 54, on Nov. 26. Fox was killed and his body was dumped in western Baghdad on March 9. They belonged to the Christian Peacemakers Teams group.
You can read more about Jill Carroll, her work, her kidnapping and release, at http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0113/carroll_update.html
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Hey there, you are referring to the poem which was sent to me by Rick Bias I presume? To my knowledge there is no problem posting it or making a copy for yourself as long as you do not try to take credit for it as your own work. Use it as you like! Thanks for coming by and I hope you will come back again!
~Tab
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