Carroll meets with Monitor colleagues
Ex-hostage voices thanks for support
Former hostage Jill Carroll met yesterday with the staff of The Christian Science Monitor, visiting for the first time the newsroom of the paper that hired her a week after she was taken captive in Iraq.
The 28-year-old journalist had been working as a freelancer for the Boston-based newspaper when she was kidnapped in January from one of Baghdad's most dangerous Sunni Arab neighborhoods by a group calling itself the Revenge Brigade. The newspaper added her to its staff during her 82 days in captivity. She was released Thursday and returned to the United States on Sunday.
David Cook, the Monitor's Washington bureau chief, described Carroll's 45-minute visit with her colleagues as ''an emotional love-fest."
The Monitor released a copy of the six-minute video of the meeting and posted it on its website. The video shows her, with her relatives standing off to the side, delivering a composed but emotional ''thank you" to her newsroom colleagues.
''I just want to say how much I'm overwhelmed by how wonderful the paper has been to my family," Carroll said. ''I got back from this ordeal and discovered, it's like a humanitarian organization."
Carroll has been in seclusion with her parents and twin sister since she arrived in Boston on Sunday. Cook said Carroll is not yet ready to tell her story to the public.
Her kidnappers had demanded the release of all female detainees in Iraq or Carroll would be killed. US officials released some female detainees, but said it had nothing to do with the demands.
Cook declined at a press conference to discuss any diplomatic maneuvers that may have led to Carroll's release but implied there was more to the story than was publicly known.
Monitor editor Richard Bergenheim issued a statement praising the US government for extensive efforts.
''To note this while Jill was being held could have disrupted those efforts or endangered her life," the statement read. ''US Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad in Iraq and all the services of the United States that come under the embassy's umbrella worked on Jill's case with a passion."
