A US journalist who was held hostage in Iraq for 82 days has returned home to Boston.
Twenty eight-year-old Jill Carroll was accompanied on the Lufthansa flight by a colleague from her employer, the Boston-based Christian Science Monitor, according to reporters on the plane.
Earlier in the day, the journalist retracted statements she had made during her 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 US military presence.
Speaking yesterday at a US base in Germany, she said the recording was made under duress.
A statement was read to the media by the editor of the Christian Science Monitor, the US newspaper she worked for before her kidnap. Ms Carroll retracted the statements she made during her captivity.
"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."
Carroll, who had 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 otherwise not shown herself in public prior to her brief appearance yesterday.
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. US officials did release some female detainees at the time, but said it had nothing to do with the demands.