American reporter Jill Carroll, who was kidnapped three months ago in a bloody ambush that killed her translator and later appeared in videotapes pleading for help, was released yesterday. Her editor said she was "fine."
"She was released this morning, she's talked to her father and she's fine," said David Cook, an editor for the Christian Science Monitor in Washington.
Police Lieutenant Colonel Falah al-Mohammedawi said Carroll was released near an office of the Iraqi Islamic Party in western Baghdad.
"She is healthy and we handed her over to the Americans," said Nasir al-Ani, a party member.
The party is the main Sunni political organization.
Carroll, a freelance reporter for the 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 300m from al-Dulaimi's office.
Her captors, calling themselves the Revenge Brigades, had demanded the release of all women 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.
She was last seen in a videotape broadcast Feb. 9 by the private Kuwaiti TV station Al-Rai.
On Wednesday Carroll's twin, Katie, pleaded for her sister's release on the Al-Arabiya network.
"I've been living a nightmare, worrying if she is hurt or ill," she said in a statement.
Meanwhile, assailants in speeding cars gunned down a police commando as he was leaving his house in south Baghdad yesterday, and drive-by shooters killed a lawyer as she got out of a taxi in the southern city of Basra, police said. A dozen Iraqis were wounded in bombings and other attacks in the capital. The US military also reported two deaths yesterday.
In other developments, Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari on Wednesday vigorously asserted his right to stay in office and warned the US against interfering in the country's political process.
Al-Jaafari also defended his recent political alliance with Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, now the prime minister's most powerful backer, saying in an interview that al-Sadr and his militia, now thousands strong, are a fact of life in Iraq and need to be accepted into mainstream politics.
Al-Jaafari said he would work to fold the country's myriad militias into the official security forces and ensure that recruits and top security ministers abandoned their ethnic or sectarian loyalties.
Al-Jaafari is at the center of the deadlock in the talks over forming a new government.
also see story:
New kind of violence now terrorizing Iraqis
‘CORRECT IDENTIFICATION’: Beginning in May, Taiwanese married to Japanese can register their home country as Taiwan in their spouse’s family record, ‘Nikkei Asia’ said The government yesterday thanked Japan for revising rules that would allow Taiwanese nationals married to Japanese citizens to list their home country as “Taiwan” in the official family record database. At present, Taiwanese have to select “China.” Minister of Foreign Affairs Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) said the new rule, set to be implemented in May, would now “correctly” identify Taiwanese in Japan and help protect their rights, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement. The statement was released after Nikkei Asia reported the new policy earlier yesterday. The name and nationality of a non-Japanese person marrying a Japanese national is added to the
AT RISK: The council reiterated that people should seriously consider the necessity of visiting China, after Beijing passed 22 guidelines to punish ‘die-hard’ separatists The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) has since Jan. 1 last year received 65 petitions regarding Taiwanese who were interrogated or detained in China, MAC Minister Chiu Chui-cheng (邱垂正) said yesterday. Fifty-two either went missing or had their personal freedoms restricted, with some put in criminal detention, while 13 were interrogated and temporarily detained, he said in a radio interview. On June 21 last year, China announced 22 guidelines to punish “die-hard Taiwanese independence separatists,” allowing Chinese courts to try people in absentia. The guidelines are uncivilized and inhumane, allowing Beijing to seize assets and issue the death penalty, with no regard for potential
‘UNITED FRONT’ FRONTS: Barring contact with Huaqiao and Jinan universities is needed to stop China targeting Taiwanese students, the education minister said Taiwan has blacklisted two Chinese universities from conducting academic exchange programs in the nation after reports that the institutes are arms of Beijing’s United Front Work Department, Minister of Education Cheng Ying-yao (鄭英耀) said in an exclusive interview with the Chinese-language Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister paper) published yesterday. China’s Huaqiao University in Xiamen and Quanzhou, as well as Jinan University in Guangzhou, which have 600 and 1,500 Taiwanese on their rolls respectively, are under direct control of the Chinese government’s political warfare branch, Cheng said, citing reports by national security officials. A comprehensive ban on Taiwanese institutions collaborating or
STILL COMMITTED: The US opposes any forced change to the ‘status quo’ in the Strait, but also does not seek conflict, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said US President Donald Trump’s administration released US$5.3 billion in previously frozen foreign aid, including US$870 million in security exemptions for programs in Taiwan, a list of exemptions reviewed by Reuters showed. Trump ordered a 90-day pause on foreign aid shortly after taking office on Jan. 20, halting funding for everything from programs that fight starvation and deadly diseases to providing shelters for millions of displaced people across the globe. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who has said that all foreign assistance must align with Trump’s “America First” priorities, issued waivers late last month on military aid to Israel and Egypt, the
RSS