Captured US journalist pleaded for a quick death

AT one of the most desperate moments of her captivity in Iraq, fearing she was about to be beheaded, reporter Jill Carroll pleaded with one of her captors for a quick death by pistol, saying: “I don’t want the knife.”

In her first public account of her 82-day hostage ordeal, she said she had feared the worst when her captors said they planned to use her in a second propaganda video. The kidnappers, however, seemed confused when she made her request and said they didn’t plan to kill her.

Ms Carroll describes the terror she felt, even at times when her captors were civil to her, in the first segment of an 11-part series on the kidnapping. It was published on Sunday on the website of the Christian Science Monitor, where she is a staff writer.