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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...

BOSTON - At one of the most desperate moments of her captivity in Iraq, fearing she was about to be beheaded, reporter Jill Carroll pleaded with one of her captors for a quick death by pistol, saying: "I don't want the knife." ADVERTISEMENT In her first public account of her 82-day hostage ordeal, Carroll said she had feared the worst when her captors said they planned to use her in a second propaganda video. The kidnappers, however, seemed confused when she made her request and said they didn't plan to kill her. Carroll describes the terror she felt, even at...

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...

Carroll Disavows Statements Against U.S. By MATT MOORE, Associated Press Writer 57 minutes ago Protected by the U.S. military and far from the country where she had been held hostage, Jill Carroll strongly disavowed statements she had made during captivity in Iraq and shortly after her release, saying Saturday she had been repeatedly threatened. 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 in a statement Saturday, she said the recording was made under threat. Her editor has said three men were...

DAMASCUS, Syria The kidnapping happened quickly and efficiently on a bright, cold Baghdad morning, the day after Christmas. ...Now I knew I'd waited too long: A pair of sedans blocked the empty road I was traveling down with my driver and translator; men in balaclavas clutching AK-47s jumped out. Tied-up, blindfolded, my mobile phones taken, I was bundled into the trunk. After the lid slammed shut, there was silence, an appalling moment, fear choking the breath from my lungs. It was also strangely cathartic: I quickly came to terms with the idea of being dead and decided there was not...

Boston, MA (AHN) - Freed American hostage Jill Carroll says she was forced into making a propaganda video that criticized the U.S. while she was in captivity. She says in a statement read by Richard Bergenheim, editor of The Christian Science Monitor, "During my last night in captivity, my captors forced me to participate in a propaganda video." She says, "They told me they would let me go if I cooperated. I was living in a threatening environment, under their control, and wanted to go home alive. I agreed." Reuters reports that Carroll was freelancing for The Monitor when she...

breaking!

Former hostage Jill Carroll strongly disavowed statements she had made during captivity in Iraq and shortly after her release, saying Saturday she had been repeatedly threatened. 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...

President Bush, Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice and US ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad all expressed great relief and happiness on learning that Christian Science Monitor reporter Jill Carroll was released unharmed near an office of the Iraqi Islamic Party yesterday, after almost three months in captivity. Ambassador Khalilzad told reporters the United States made no agreements with the captors and paid no ransom to secure Carroll’s release. She was abducted by terrorists on January 7, 2006 in western Baghdad, where she’d traveled to interview Sunni Arab politician Adnan Dulaimi. Her driver escaped; the terrorists killed her interpreter. Carroll had...

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,...

Report: Carroll video was filmed under duress Reporter said positive things about militant captors to win her freedom MSNBC Updated: 6:21 p.m. ET March 31, 2006 Video of kidnapped journalist Jill Carroll the night before her release is now being characterized by her employer The Christian Science Monitor as propaganda she was forced to take part in as the price for her freedom. In the video, which first appeared Thursday on a jihadist Web site, Carroll praises her captors for treating her well and attacks U.S. policies in Iraq. On Friday, The Christian Science Monitor, quoting Carroll's father, Jim Carroll,...

Freed US hostage says Iraq insurgents 'will win:' video 18 minutes ago US authorities guarded freed hostage Jill Carroll in Iraq after insurgents released her from nearly three months of captivity and published a video showing her praising them. US officials declined to say when the 28-year-old freelance journalist would go home to the United States, but a top Sunni leader at whose office Carroll showed up on Thursday said she could arrive "anytime in the US." Video footage posted on the Internet late Thursday showed Carroll in an interview with her kidnappers before her release in which she praised...

Carroll . . . gave a short interview to Baghdad TV . . . before being transported to the Green Zone by the US military. She was told the interview was for internal party uses only, and didn't realize it would be broadcast. In that interview Carrroll said that for most of her ordeal she was kept in a darkened room which she later described as a "cave."[. . .]She was only allowed to watch television and read a newspaper once and had little information about what was going on in the world at large.[. . .]Mr. Ani said she...

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - Jill Carroll's kidnappers reportedly warned her before her release that she might be killed if she cooperated with the Americans or went to the Green Zone, saying it was infiltrated by insurgents. The freelance writer for The Christian Science Monitor, who was freed by her captors Thursday and dropped off at a branch office of the Iraqi Islamic Party, was later escorted to the Green Zone by the U.S. military, the newspaper said Friday. At first, she was reluctant to go, but a Monitor writer in Baghdad, Scott Peterson, convinced her it was safe, the newspaper...

...and it sounds like a lie. I know I'm probably in the minority so far on this release of Jill Carroll but a short few months ago, this girl was on camera with a gun to her head with a threat of being killed if some prisioners were not released and now we hear from her own lips that she was at an Iraqi club med? They were sweet to her, TV, Newspapers, toilet priveliges and all the food she could eat? Now, I expect this from NPR and MSNBC but not FoxNews. This story isn't passing the smell test...

The following is a trancript of the video released this morning on the internet by the "Mujahideen of Iraq", showing a pre-release interview that the jihadis did with American hostage Jill Carroll. The interview, conducted in English except for a brief portion at the end, can be downloaded from http://www.lauramansfield.com/j/jolkorl2.rm Male speaker: Dear Carroll. We are from the mujahideen in Iraq. (Jill Carroll nods her head) Male speaker: Please we want to ask you some questions. Jill Carroll: mmmK Male speaker: How did the mujahideen treat you? Jill Carroll: They treated me very well, they treated me very well. Like...

American reporter Jill Carroll has been released after a three-month hostage ordeal in Iraq and was with US officials inside Baghdad's fortified Green Zone. -snip- Video interview A video posted on the internet, which could not be independently verified, showed Ms Carroll in an interview apparently conducted by her captors before they released her. "Did you think the American army or the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) would save you at any time," a muffled male voice asked Ms Carroll in accented English. "Sometimes I thought maybe that they might come, they might find me, they might find a way to...

Freed US hostage Jill Carroll praised Iraq's insurgents and predicted their victory in an interview conducted by her captors before they released her today, according to a video posted on the internet. The footage, which could not be independently verified, appeared to have been filmed shortly before the freelance journalist was released today nearly three months after being kidnapped in Baghdad. "Did you think the American army or the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) would save you at any time?" a muffled male voice asked Ms Carroll in accented English. "Sometimes I thought maybe that they might come, they might...

Why is Jill Carroll dressed as an Iraqi Muslim female in her interviews with the press? Better yet, why does not some reporter ask her the same question? Something does not seem right. But what do I know sitting at my computer 8,000 miles away?

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Kidnapped U.S. reporter Jill Carroll has been released after nearly three months in captivity, Iraq police and the leader of the Islamic Party said Thursday. She was reported in good condition. Carroll, a freelance reporter for The Christian Science Monitor, was kidnapped on Jan. 7, in Baghdad's western Adil neighborhood while going to interview Sunni Arab politician Adnan al-Dulaimi. Her translator was killed in the attack about 300 yards from al-Dulaimi's office. "She was released this morning, she's talked to her father and she's fine," said David Cook, Washington bureau chief of The Christian Science Monitor

Carroll Says Captors Treated Her Well By MARIAM FAM, Associated Press Writer 21 minutes ago American reporter Jill Carroll was set free Thursday, nearly three months after she was kidnapped in an ambush that killed her translator, and said she had been treated well. Carroll apparently was left in the street near the Iraqi Islamic Party offices. She walked inside, and people there called American officials. "I was treated well, but I don't know why I was kidnapped," Carroll said in a brief interview on Baghdad television. Even though the group threatened twice in videotapes to kill her, Carroll said,...

American hostage Jill Carroll, a freelance journalist released Thursday in Iraq after nearly three months in captivity, said she was "treated very well" while she was held. "They never said they would hit me. They never threatened me in any way," she said in a TV interview after her release. The interview was broadcast by Baghdad Television, a station owned by the Iraqi Islamic Party. It was conducted inside the headquarters of the Iraqi Islamic Party, a Sunni group. Wearing glasses and a hijab scarf, she said, "They allowed me once to see TV. They also allowed me once to...

A US reporter held hostage in Iraq for more than two months has been freed. Jill Carroll, who works for the Boston-based Christian Science Monitor, was abducted by unknown gunmen in west Baghdad on 7 January. She told Iraqi television she had been treated well and was looking forward to being reunited with her family. The US ambassador to Iraq said no ransom was paid by the US embassy. Ms Carroll's release came a week after three other Westerners were freed. [The kidnappers] just came to me and said: 'We're letting you go' Jill Carroll "I'm just happy to be...

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Wearing a green Islamic head scarf, American reporter Jill Carroll walked into an Iraqi political party office Thursday, set free nearly three months after being kidnapped in an ambush that killed her translator. "I was treated well, but I don't know why I was kidnapped," Carroll said on Baghdad television, only weeks after she appeared weeping in a video put out by kidnappers who had threatened to kill her. Her family thanked "the generous people around the world who worked officially or unofficially" to gain her freedom. Her father, Jim, said he was asleep in his North...

WASHINGTON -- German authorities have arrested a man who is accused of trying to extort $2 million from the Christian Science Monitor by promising to win the release of American reporter Jill Carroll, who was freed from captivity in Baghdad Thursday. A U.S. arrest warrant and FBI affidavit made public Thursday by federal prosecutors in Washington said that Kelvin Kamara, a west African native living in Germany, struck up an e-mail exchange with a Monitor editor in Washington little more than a month after Carroll's abduction in early January. Kamara, calling himself Saidu Mohammed, said he knew who was holding...

Amherst, Mass. -- All Jill Carroll ever wanted to be was a foreign correspondent. The 28-year-old freelance reporter for The Christian Science Monitor was released Thursday nearly four months after being kidnapped in Iraq. "I was treated well, but I don't know why I was kidnapped," Carroll said in a brief interview on Baghdad television. Her ordeal took place half a world away from where she began her career. Carroll, who grew in Michigan, received a bachelor's degree in journalism from the University of Massachusetts in 1999. After college, Carroll worked as a reporting assistant for The Wall Street Journal...

Breaking - Jill Carrol released in Iraq - more to come

(Boston-AP) February 26, 2006 - An ominous deadline in Iraq in the case of kidnapped journalist Jill Carroll, Saturday is the second execution deadline her captors have set. Carroll's kidnappers made the latest threat in a February 10th videotape first aired on a Kuwaiti television station. In that tape, Carroll appeals for her supporters to do whatever it takes to win her release "as quickly as possible." A tape in January included a threat to kill Carroll within 72 hours unless all Iraqi women were released from custody. The February 10th tape did not make that demand. Carroll was working...

JILL CARROLL, the 28-year-old freelance reporter for the Christian Science Monitor who has been held by kidnappers in Iraq since Jan. 7, appeared on a video last week. "Please just do whatever they want," she said. "Give them whatever they want as quickly as possible. There is a very short time. Please do it fast. That's all." What the kidnappers want is for the United States to free the female prisoners it is holding in Iraq, and they have made it clear that if the U.S. does not do so, Carroll will be killed. Given that other captives have been...

Citing sources close to the kidnappers, Alrai Television in Kuwait reported Friday that U.S. journalist Jill Carroll's kidnappers set "a final deadline of February 26" for their demands to be met. It would be the second deadline set by her abductors, who have repeatedly said they will kill Carroll if the United States does not release all female prisoners it has in custody in Iraq. The kidnappers said they would be adhering to "rightful law" in killing Carroll, according to the private Kuwaiti station's chairman, Jassim Boodai. Boodai would not reveal the source, but said the information is "fresh."

Kidnapped American journalist Jill Carroll appeared in a video aired Thursday on a private Kuwaiti TV station, appealing in a calm, composed voice for her supporters to do whatever it takes to win her release "as quickly as possible."Carroll, wearing traditional Arab attire, said the date was Feb. 2, nearly a month after she was seized in Baghdad by armed men who killed her Iraqi translator. She was shown sitting on a chair in front of a wall with a large floral design. The 28-year-old freelance reporter for The Christian Science Monitor said she had sent one letter and was...

Kidnapped American journalist Jill Carroll appeared in a video aired Thursday on a private Kuwaiti TV station, appealing in a calm, composed voice for her supporters to do whatever it takes to win her release "as quickly as possible." Carroll, wearing traditional Arab attire, said the date was Feb. 2, nearly a month after she was seized in Baghdad by armed men who killed her Iraqi translator. She was shown sitting on a chair in front of a wall with a large floral design. The 28-year-old freelance reporter for The Christian Science Monitor said she had sent one letter and...