Jill Carroll: Yes, it was duress

The Washington Post has an article that gives more details of Jill Carroll’s behavior immediately following her release, and yes, it was duress. Pressure from all around, seemingly.

Jill Carroll wondered from day to day whether she would grow old or die a hostage.

“It was like falling off a cliff for three months, waiting to hit the ground,” the 28-year-old American reporter said Thursday after being released by her kidnappers.

Yeah, that totally sounds like someone who believes in her kidnappers’ cause, and can’t wait to make a propaganda video about them.

Hours later, Carroll’s captors dropped her off in a Baghdad neighborhood, outside an office of the Iraqi Islamic Party. The politicians inside gave her juice, candy, water and tissues.

Composed, Carroll negotiated her way through the first of many politically laden conversations she would have Thursday, trying to stick to what she wanted and didn’t want to say.

The party officials asked her to write out and sign a statement saying she had not been harmed in her brief time at their offices. They had her record a question-and-answer session on camera that they said was for their records. It showed up on television shortly afterward.

Party leader Tariq al-Hashimi presented her with an embossed Koran in a plush box. The Koran was for the true followers of Islam, Hashimi said, and he mentioned the Iraqi people. Accepting it, Carroll said her suffering was nothing compared with theirs.

Now why would the Islamic party want her to sign that statement? Could it be for propaganda purposes? Taking advantage of a woman who was still afraid for her life?

Let me remind you of the quote from the man who presented her with the Koran:

He went on: “She said, ‘I promised the kidnappers not to speak.’ She was a little bit frightened. She was very careful. She didn’t give much information.”

Yes, duress. This woman was not free to speak her mind, and is only now feeling the freedom she was born with, and which she lacked these last three months.

RAMSTEIN AIR BASE, Germany (AP) – Smiling broadly, journalist Jill Carroll arrived Saturday under U.S. military protection in Germany, the first stop on her return to the United States from Iraq where she was kidnapped and spent 82 days in captivity.

Gone was the Islamic headscarf she had worn as a hostage and she had traded her full-length robe for jeans, a bulky gray sweater, and a desert camouflage jacket.

“I’m happy to be here,” she told Col. Kurt Lohide, the U.S. officer who welcomed her to Ramstein Air Base.

Look at the picture. Quite a difference from the drone or the fearful woman you saw on the videos she was forced to make.

I am waiting to hear from her — in her own words — about why she made the video. I’m pretty sure she’s going to tell us she was threatened.