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.

She said within hours of her abduction at gunpoint in Baghdad, she was taken to two homes, dressed in new clothes, fed a chicken and rice meal and invited to watch TV with the family of one of her captors.

“They all seemed concerned that I think they were good, or at least that they were treating me well,” Ms Carroll wrote. “It sounds hospitable. But in my mind every second was a test — the choice of food, TV program, everything — and they would kill me if I gave the wrong answer.”

The 28-year-old journalist was kidnapped on January 7 and her Iraqi interpreter, Alan Enwiya, was shot dead.

She was released near a Sunni Arab political party office in Baghdad 82 days later and returned to the United States on April 2.

The website also contains video clips of Ms Carroll describing her abduction, detention and survival. It’s the first time Ms Carroll, who was a freelance writer when she was abducted, has told her story.

“In the first few minutes after my abduction, my captors peppered me with questions in Arabic,” she wrote. “I played dumb, fearful that they would think I understood too much and kill me.”

Her kidnappers wanted all female detainees in Iraq to be freed, and threatened to kill Ms Carroll if they weren’t. US officials did release some women but said the decision was unrelated to the demands of the kidnappers. She 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. Last week, the Pentagon announced US troops had arrested four Iraqi men in connection with her kidnapping.