Family appeals for mercy

THE family of an American reporter abducted in Baghdad appealed for mercy after her captors threatened to kill her if US authorities don’t release all Iraqi women in military custody by tomorrow.

Jill Carroll, aged 28, a freelancer for the Boston-based Christian Science Monitor, was kidnapped on January 7. On Tuesday, she was seen for the first time since her abduction on a silent, 20-second video clip released to Al-Jazeera television. Station officials said the video also included the threat to kill her if the Iraqi women weren’t freed.

“We have eight females. They are being held for the same reasons as the others, namely that they are a threat to security,” said a spokesman for the US military detentions operation, Lieutenant Aaron Henninger. Some 14,000 men are held at Abu Ghraib and other jails on suspicion of insurgent activity.

A still photograph of Carroll from the videotape appeared on Al Jazeera’s website carrying a logo reading the Revenge Brigades, a similar name to a group that kidnapped an Iraqi- Swedish Christian politician in January 2005. He was released unharmed after being threatened with beheading.

It is not the first time that kidnappers of Western hostages have demanded the release of women prisoners.

In October 2004, three engineers, two Americans and a Briton, were beheaded after being abducted in Baghdad by al-Qaida militants who demanded the release of women prisoners.

Washington said at the time it held only two women in Iraq, both top weapons scientists under Saddam Hussein.