Freed journalist returns home, disavows anti-U.S. statements

BOSTON – Journalist Jill Carroll was back on U.S. soil Sunday, tearfully embracing her parents and twin sister after 82 days as a hostage in Iraq that she said gave her a deep appreciation for the myriad simple joys of freedom.

“I finally feel like I am alive again. I feel so good,” Carroll said. “To be able to step outside anytime, to feel the sun directly on your face – to see the whole sky. These are luxuries that we just don’t appreciate every day.”

The 28-year-old Christian Science Monitor reporter arrived at Boston’s Logan International Airport just after noon, and was quickly driven away in a police-escorted limousine to the newspaper’s headquarters.

She didn’t step out into public view, but reports on the Monitor’s Web site, along with photos, showed a joyful and tearful reunion with her parents and twin sister.

Carroll has said her kidnappers confined her to a small, soundproof room with frosted windows before she was released Thursday after nearly three months in captivity.

She was seized Jan. 7 in one of Baghdad’s most dangerous neighborhoods, near where a Sunni Arab official had agreed to meet her for an interview that never took place. The gunmen who abducted her killed her Iraqi translator.

She was accompanied on the flight by Monitor colleagues, who described her seven-hour flight back to the U.S.

Carroll was touched to find a red rose on her dinner tray, the Monitor reported. Later, a flight attendant dropped off a copy of Friday’s USA Today in which she saw her own face framed by a black head scarf. It was a photo of the giant poster that had been erected in Rome.

She was tickled to see pictures of her family and kissed the photo of her father, Jim Carroll. “He looks good,” she said, and ran her fingers over the photo of her mom, Mary Beth, the Monitor reported.

Editor Richard Bergenheim said colleagues were grateful Carroll was home safe.

“When Jill is ready, the Monitor will begin to tell her story and we will also hold a press conference where she will speak. But we will not be making any further statements on Sunday and hope that the Carroll family’s privacy will be respected,” Bergenheim said in a statement.

Photographs of the reunion released by the Monitor showed Carroll with her family, her sister stroking her hair, her father casting eyes upward as he held her tightly, her mother staring intently into her face.

Carroll left the Ramstein Air Base in southwestern Germany on Saturday after arriving from Balad Air Base in Baghdad. She strongly disavowed statements she had made during captivity in Iraq and shortly after her release, saying 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. On Saturday, she said the recording was made under duress.

“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 cooperated. I was living in a threatening environment, under their control, and wanted to go home alive. So I agreed,” she said in a statement.

“Things that I was forced to say while captive are now being taken by some as an accurate reflection of my personal views. They are not.”

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who was held prisoner for more than five years during the Vietnam War, said Carroll found herself in “a terrible, terrible position” and said Americans should view her taped statements critical of the U.S. military presence in Iraq in that context.

“We understand when you’re held a captive in that situation that you do things under duress. God bless her, and we’re glad she’s home,” McCain said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

Carroll, who has studied Arabic, attracted a huge amount of sympathy during her ordeal, and a wide variety of groups in the Middle East, including the Islamic militant group Hamas, appealed for her release.

Aside from the short interview aired on Iraqi television upon her release, Carroll had not shown herself in public before a brief appearance Saturday.

The kidnappers, calling themselves the Revenge Brigades, had demanded the release of all female detainees in Iraq by Feb. 26 or Carroll would be killed. U.S. officials did release some female detainees at the time, but said it had nothing to do with the demands.

In the statement, Carroll also disavowed an interview she gave to the Iraqi Islamic Party, a Sunni Arab organization in whose offices she was dropped off upon her release. She said the party had promised her the interview would not be aired “and broke their word.”

Carroll has said her kidnappers confined her to a small, soundproof room with frosted, opaque windows.

The Michigan native graduated in 1999 from the University of Massachusetts with a degree in journalism. She 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.

She was freelancing for the Monitor when she was kidnapped, but was hired as a staff writer about a week later to ensure she had financial benefits, Bergenheim said.