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~~~snip~~~ ....Men caught repeatedly smoking have their index fingers rammed into metal pipes and then snapped, while cigarette shops have been torched. The rules have often been taken to absurd extremes. Greengrocers in the “caliphate” told The Times that they had been ordered not to sell bananas in public because they were deemed obscene, while cucumbers could not be sold next to tomatoes, which are deemed to represent femininity. At the most extreme, shepherds have been ordered to cover the nether regions of their goats to avoid offending strict Salafist sensibilities. ~~~snip~~~

BAGHDAD (May 3) - U.S.-led forces killed a senior al-Qaida in Iraq operative believed responsible for the kidnappings of Westerners, including a Christian Science Monitor reporter and a slain peace worker from Virginia, a military spokesman said Thursday. The Islamic State of Iraq, an umbrella group of Sunni insurgents that includes al-Qaida, confirmed in an Internet statement that its official spokesman, Muharib Abdul-Latif al-Jubouri, had been killed. The U.S. Embassy, meanwhile, said a rocket attack on Iraq's Green Zone on Wednesday killed four foreigners - one from the Philippines, one from Nepal and two from India - who were working...

Excerpt - US and Iraqi forces have killed a senior al-Qaeda leader believed to have been behind the kidnapping of the American journalist Jill Carroll and the murder of an American peace activist. There was a swirl of confusion surrounding the killing of Muhared Adbul Latif al-Jebouri in an ultra-violent area of Baghdad, with Iraqi officials initially identifying him as Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, the head of the Islamic State of Iraq, a coalition of extremist Sunni militant groups that has declared a Caliphate in the lawless areas north of Baghdad. US officials said al-Jebouri’s body may even have been mistaken...

Journalist Jill Carroll is back home now, and detailing her experiences as a captive of the jihadists in Iraq in the Christian Science Monitor. ( http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0814/p01s01-woiq.html ) I'm sure the details will prove fascinating, but the upshot of what she has learned is that the Islamists are - gasp! - different from us! Furthermore, I believe that she's beginning to suspect that they are really not very nice people. Oh whatever will this poor old world be FORCED to endure next? Since the beginning of the Iraq phase of this conflict of civilizations, I've experienced the teeth-grinding frustration of watching...

Captive in Baghdad The harrowing account of a courageous reporter. By Bill Roggio Jill Carroll, the Christian Science Monitor reporter who was kidnapped by insurgents in Iraq last January and was released 82 days later, has begun to tell the story of the long days she spent in captivity following her kidnapping. In a series called Hostage: The Jill Carroll Story, Jill provides a first-person account of her kidnapping, the murder of her interpreter, and her initial days in captivity. This is a fascinating look at the thoughts and feelings of a victim in a kidnapping plot, and at the...

<p>BAGHDAD - Jill Carroll says her kidnapping was set up by Adnan al-Dulaimi or someone in his Baghdad office. Mr. Dulaimi met with her chief captor at least twice during her captivity, and the Sunni politician pleaded for Ms. Carroll's freedom, according to her captors.</p>

Jill Carroll's captors appear to be involved in some of the most high-profile kidnappings of Westerners in Iraq during the past two years. A Monitor investigation - including interviews with other kidnap victims, US, Iraqi, and Italian investigators, as well as court testimony in Iraq - ties her abductors, or others close to them, to at least five kidnapping incidents, including Ms. Carroll: [...] The strongest evidence suggests that the same group that took Carroll also abducted Ms. Sgrena, the Italian journalist. In early March, Abu Rasha, the leader of one of the three cells handling Carroll's kidnapping, went into...

The insurgents allowed her to conduct occasional interviews about their organization in which she learned that they belonged to an insurgent council, including members of al Qaeda. "The main captor during all these interviews I would do was anxious to tell me about this. He told me his name was Abdullah Rashid," she said. "He said he had helped form this council … in Iraq that brought together some of the main Sunni insurgent groups, and he was the head of it. One of those groups in that council was al Qaeda and Zarqawi." She was held from Jan. 7...

My chief captor had an idea about how to prod the U.S. government into action: another video. He said this one would be different, and left. I turned to the two guards sitting on cushions a few feet away and started to panic. Really, really panic. "Oh my God, oh my God, they're going to kill me, this is going to be it. I don't know when but they're going to do it," I thought. I crawled over to Abu Hassan, the one who seemed more grown-up and sympathetic. His 9mm pistol was by his side, as usual. "You're my...

But unlike the previous times, the men didn't lower their weapons - and they kept advancing. The man closest to the car, a rotund person with salt-and-pepper stubble, had his gun aimed right through the windshield at Adnan. My eyes were glued to him. I was confused about why he didn't lower his pistol. At the same time Adnan and Alan opened their doors and began to get out of the car. The gunmen ran at us. A whisper exploded from me into a scream, "No, no, NO!" as I tried to get out. The door closed on my right...

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...

CAMP HABBANIYAH - Jill Carroll ‘s kidnappers are now locked up. Marines captured four members of an insurgent kidnapping cell responsible for the kidnapping of American journalist Jill Carroll of the Christian Science Monitor. Marines of L Company, 3rd Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment captured and detained three members May 19, in a small village west of Fallujah. A fourth member of the same kidnapping cell was detained later by Marines of 1st Battalion, 25th Marine Regiment. Both battalions operated as part of Regimental Combat Team 5. Carroll was held hostage by insurgent captors for 82 days between January and March...

BAGHDAD, Iraq — U.S. troops arrested four Iraqi men in the kidnapping of American journalist Jill Carroll who was held captive for 82 days, a U.S. spokesman said Wednesday, as troops reinforcements were moving into the capital to stem sectarian violence that threatens civil war. Maj. Gen. William Caldwell said the four, who were not identified, were arrested in Anbar province west of Baghdad but he did not say when. Another U.S. spokesman, Lt. Col. Barry Johnson, said the arrests were made about a month ago

HABANIYAH, Iraq - U.S. Marines who cracked the Jill Carroll kidnapping case say the American journalist was held for a time in a home within sight of a sprawling U.S. military base in western Iraq. The Marines said the big break occurred May 19 when they searched a suspect's home near the Taqqadum logistics base seven weeks after Carroll's release. A young lieutenant linked the residence to intelligence reports in the case. After one man was arrested near Taqqadum, other troops captured three more suspects and freed two kidnapped Iraqis in other hideouts where Carroll is thought to have been...

NEW YORK Four months after being released from an 82-day kidnapping ordeal in Iraq, Christian Science Monitor Reporter Jill Carroll will tell the story of her abduction and detention in an 11-part series set to run in the newspaper beginning Aug. 14. "I would describe it as a comprehensive and compelling report on Jill's 82 days in captivity and the lessons learned by her," said Dave Cook, the Monitor's Washington, D.C. bureau chief who has acted as a spokesman for Carroll. "She has a phenomenal memory, it is a detail-rich story." But don't look for the 28-year-old journalist to do...

Leader of the Iraqi Insurgency Negotiated Journalist's Release and Says Hussein Should Be President Again April 12, 2006 — - The man behind Jill Carroll's release tells ABC News in an exclusive interview that kidnapping the American journalist was a mistake. Sheikh Sattam al-Gaood reveals what it took to free her -- and why he supports the insurgency. Al-Gaood was one of three people specifically thanked by Carroll's family after her release. He was once one of Saddam Hussein's closest business associates, and now says he is a proud leader of the Iraqi insurgency. "They are defending their country," he...

There wasn't a day I spent in Iraq that I wasn't called into the office. It was perpetual operational mode, sometimes 20 hours a day. My tour as the coordinator of the Hostage Working Group at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad ended on April 1, and as it happens, that's the day we put journalist Jill Carroll on a military flight to Germany, and back home. I'm relieved beyond measure, because I wouldn't have been able to leave this job without a sense of mission accomplishment if she were still a captive. Seeing Jill's tears of happiness when she stepped...

Subject: Jill Carroll's "release in Iraq" I received this from a friend who has always presented the facts straight, however I have not verified the info on Jill's school background, yet if it is true would make a slam-dunk story. Jill Carroll's "release in Iraq" and how the liberals will use it to dupe America I just heard from a good friend of mine who attended the University of Massachusetts when Jill Carroll was a journalism student there and a reporter on the school newspaper. Since UMASS is not Ohio State, he not only personally knew her there, but read...

Seems Jill Carroll is refusing to talk to authorities concerning her captives. She already has been caught lying in her post release interview where she says she was not threatened, since she was on video with AK- 47's trained on her head. Stokholm syndrome???? I'm not buying it...how about you?

BOSTON - Jill Carroll, the U.S. journalist held hostage for 82 days in Iraq, returned to the United States on Sunday aboard a commercial flight to Boston. The 28-year-old was accompanied on the Lufthansa flight by a colleague from her employer, the Boston-based Christian Science Monitor, according to reporters on the plane. Carroll declined to comment while on the flight. She left the airport in a black limousine escorted by state police. Her destination was unknown. She was released Thursday after nearly three months in captivity. She was seized Jan. 7 in western Baghdad by gunmen who killed her Iraqi...