BOSTON – The twin of kidnapped journalist Jill Carroll pleaded for her release on Arab television Wednesday, saying her sister is a “wonderful person” who is an “innocent woman.”

Katie Carroll read a statement on the Al-Arabiya network, noting that there had been no word from her sister’s captors in Iraq in almost two months.

“I’ve been living a nightmare, worrying if she is hurt or ill,” Katie Carroll said, according to a transcript released by the Christian Science Monitor.

“There is no one I hold closer to my heart than my sister, and I am deeply worried wondering how she is being treated,” Carroll said.

Jill Carroll, a freelance writer for the Monitor, was kidnapped in Baghdad on Jan. 7 by gunmen who killed her translator.

Her captors had demanded the release of all woman detainees in Iraq by Feb. 26 and said Carroll would be killed if that didn’t happen. The date came and went with no word about her welfare.

Carroll reported on Maine’s congressional delegation and covered Washington, D.C., for the Bangor Daily News through States News Service between August 1999 and June 2000.