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Driving home form work last evening, I heard a report that there were two groups involved in her kidnapping. The hysterical first video was apparently made while she was in the hands of the first group and comes off as the standard kidnap for ransom group. (The translator was probably killed because 1) he had little/no ransom value, 2) he could probably identify the kidnappers, 3) he tried to interfere, 4)anybody working for Westerners is de facto proof they are a apostate/traitor, and 5) standard practice since the bodyguards, drivers and translators always seem to be killed in these incidents.)

Later, she supposedly was bought by/given to an Islamist Group which held her for the majority of her captivity. The political party she was released to was also involved in her kidnapping since it was an official of the same party that she was going to interview when the kidnapping went down. The official was conveniently absent from the scene at the time.

I'm not sure about her role in the original kidnapping. As some one else commented, she liked her translator. However, collusion is not out of the question. She is somewhat suspect already because she is a long time student of Arabic language and culture. And we have the example of the two left-wing Italian women journalists that probably did collude in their kidnapping to raise money for the terrorists and embarrass the Italian government.

However, she may just be keeping prudently silent on the details while she is still in Iraq. She may have gotten a warning prior to her release that she could still be harmed if she said anything bad about her captors.

Interesting information. I don't recall that a cash ransom was ever asked for her, though. I thought it was always about the alleged "female prisoners," regardless of who was holding her.

However, it wouldn't have been surprising if some Iraqi political party officials had been involved in this, since she was apparently perceived as sympathetic to their cause even before she was kidnapped. She had already begun wearing Islamic dress and, according to one report, normally used a Muslim name. Remember, she had been a reporter for the Jordan Times, an English language paper in Jordan, before going to Iraq and had, for her relatively young age, spent a fair amount of time in the ME and already adopted many ME cultural standards. (This is aside from the question of whether or not she was a leftist.)

Personally, I don't know. I'm not sure she was in on it from the start, as were the Italians and Japanese women, but at the same time, I don't think she's an innocent. I'm glad she's free, but I for one never thought she was in any real danger to begin with. Her Iraqi translator, on the other hand, was clearly perceived as a "traitor" and that was why he was shot.