AFTER 82 DAYS, JILL CARROLL IS FREE.

Once in a while, a terrifying, heartbreaking story has a happy ending. This is one of those times.

BAGHDAD, March 30 -- American journalist Jill Carroll, abducted in early January by gunmen in Baghdad, was released to a Sunni Arab political party in the capital Thursday morning after 82 days in captivity. [ . . . ]

Carroll, 28, a freelance reporter working for the Christian Science Monitor, was brought to [Iraqi Islamic] party headquarters just after 1 p.m. local time (5 a.m. EST) and was able to borrow a phone from a party member and speak with her parents and her twin sister. [ . . . ]

After leaving the party office, Carroll met with U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad. "This is a good day. I just came from meeting with Jill Carroll," he said. "She is safe, she is free and she appears in good health and in great spirits."

He thanked Iraqi politicians who had lobbied for her release and the Iraqi Islamic Party, specifically. The United States did not make any agreement with Carroll's captors or pay any ransom, he said.

Carroll is anxious to see her family, he added, and the U.S. Embassy will help her get home as soon as possible. [ . . . ]

David Cook, the Washington bureau chief for the Christian Science Monitor, said he learned of Carroll's release on his way into work when he received a call from her father, who dialed Cook's cell phone at 6:10 a.m.

"Frankly, when I saw it, I thought, 'Oh, some reporter must be bothering Jim.' Because I'm the one who's supposed to chase the reporters away," Cook said later. "And then he told me what was happening, and it was wonderful. It was just stunning."

In Carroll's first brief interview, with the Washington Post -- and, as Ann Althouse points out, still being careful of and for her Iraqi hosts -- she said she had not been hurt, deprived, or even threatened, but that the isolation, uncertainty and lack of freedom had been "hard to bear."

Carroll said she spent her days sitting in a small, well-furnished room, its lone window made opaque by curtains and frosted glass. [ . . . ]

No noise penetrated the room from the outside, and she did not know whether she was held near Baghdad or elsewhere.

She was wearing a headscarf, as she often did while reporting in Iraq, and graciously accepted the gift of a Koran from the secretary general of the Iraqi Islamic Party, calling it "beautiful." One of Ann's commenters is disgusted, calling Carroll's behavior "Stockholm Syndrome" at best. Althouse wisely retorts:

She survived. Take a lesson from that, in case you ever find yourself in that situation. It may take a little time to wind down from a mental state that protected her.

Many Muslim leaders had condemned Carroll's kidnapping, and the Iraqi Islamic Party (Sunni) may have been involved in strenuous negotiations for her release. You've got to think someone among her captors figured out that it would be terrible PR, even in their own world, to kill her.

They're a grateful wreck over at the Monitor. Here are statements from the Monitor's editor and publisher and from Carroll's family.

Comments

[geoduck2]

thank god she's alive.

I didn't know she had a twin. Her twin must have gone through her own hell while her sister was missing.

[GN]

"One of Ann's commenters is disgusted, calling Carroll's behavior "Stockholm Syndrome" at best."

There is always at least one, isn't there?

All should be glad she survived and got her freedom, no matter how.

[Dan Kauffman]

Lest We Forget:
Allan Enwiya

I heard on the TV the other night Jill Carroll insisting that her captors treated her well, really well. Let us not forget that others who were with her that day she was captured were not treated so well. As Michelle Malikin states JILL CARROLL was FREED but Allan Enwiya wasn't, was he? He got gunned down.