IRAQ: Jill Carroll, the American journalist who spent three months as a hostage in Iraq, returned to the US yesterday in a homecoming clouded by charges from conservative bloggers that she had fallen under the influence of her kidnappers.
Ms Carroll (28), a freelance journalist working for the Christian Science Monitor when she was abducted in Baghdad in January, arrived in Boston, the newspaper's home town, on a commercial flight from Ramstein airforce base in Germany. Ms Carroll left the airport in a black limousine for the newspaper's offices in Boston. Reporters who travelled with her on the plane said she plans to spend the next few days in seclusion with her family at an apartment in Boston.
In her first hours of freedom, Ms Carroll and the Monitor were forced to counter allegations from conservative bloggers that she had betrayed sympathy for her kidnappers. The charge was granted currency by the New York Times which suggested that she had suffered from Stockholm syndrome and had come to identify with her abductors' aims.
In a statement posted on the Monitor website on Saturday, Ms Carroll dismissed any suggestion that she shared the aims of her kidnappers. "Let me be clear: I abhor all who kidnap and murder civilians, and my captors are clearly guilty of both crimes," the statement said. She also pleaded to be seen as a journalist, and not a hostage, suggesting she wanted to return to work once she recovers from the ordeal of her kidnapping.
The charges against Ms Carroll arose from a video she made in captivity that surfaced soon after her release, in which she was critical of the US military presence in Iraq.
The video was recorded last Wednesday after Ms Carroll had been held for more than 80 days in a small room.