Land of the free?
Home of the brave?
Land of the greedy
who kept a race enslaved
Land of the bloody
with blood the Constitution engraved
(stolen) Land of the free
but the Arawek forgave?
Land of the fatty
with greed the streets are paved
Land of the stingy
where world's wealth exclaved
Land of Disney
where Hollywood educates way to behave
Land of the free
home of the knave
Land of the angry
by Hiroshima the world was "saved"
Land of JD whiskey
where the KKK still rave
Land of the nasty
where the CIA created the crack crave
Land of the ugly
whose soldiers act depraved
Land of the dirty
who made Falluja a grave
Land of the lazy
where Kyoto waived
Land of the unholy
to the world McDonalds it gave
Land of the free?
Home of the slaves.

Scarica il video integrale sulla strage di Falluja direttamente cliccando qui

Vi sono zone del mondo in cui guerra è sinonimo di quotidianità, in cui un disegno di una casa distrutta racconta la fine di ogni sogno di libertà, in cui distese di croci riempiono sguardi in cerca di orizzonti di pace, in cui gli occhi grandi di un bambino sono l'immagine della resistenza.

Raccontare la guerra con gli occhi di chi la subisce non è di moda. La gente non deve sapere cosa significa morire torturati per mano di quei governi occidentali che si dicono esempi di democrazia. La gente non deve ascoltare le urla strazianti di madri che vedono morire i propri figli tra le braccia. La gente non deve vedere i corpi mutilati e violentati di giovani ragazze da parte di soldati sempre pronti a ostentare la loro generosità donando cioccolata e caramelle. La verità non si racconta. Goebbels ha insegnato che più grande è la bugia più il popolo la crederà.

E cosi guerre imperialiste sono spacciate per guerre di liberazione della donna dal burqa , o per l'abbattimento di un regime accusato di possedere armi di distruzione di massa (mai trovate).

In questa pagina vogliamo parlare delle tragedie dimenticate, delle guerre silenziose, delle stragi senza colpevoli, nel tentativo di dare una piccola voce a chi non riempie le pagine dei giornali o le cronache dei nostri telegiornali perchè non fa "audience" (non crea ricchezza). Spesso sentiamo dotti teologi, fini giornalisti e politici avventurosi discettare della mercificazione della vita...chissà perchè il problema si pone solo dal concepimento alla nascita e non quando migliaia di persone sono trucidate dalle nostre (occidentali) milizie "democratiche" per salvaguardare i nostri interessi economici.

Fortunatamente ci sono ancora dei giornalisti che rendono merito al loro lavoro e raccontano la guerra dalla prospettiva delle uniche vittime: i popoli.

Molti hanno dimenticato cosa successe nel Novembre del 2004 a Falluja, città a circa 70 Km da Baghdad. Le truppe statunitensi bombardarono la città utilizzando armi incendiarie (al fosforo bianco o al napalm), come riportato dallo straordinario servizio di Sigfrido Ranucci per RaiNews24, che si può vedere al sito

http://www.rainews24.rai.it/ran24/inchiesta/body.asp

Il video è molto crudo, ma mostra in tutta la sua straziante verità quale strage è stata commessa dalle truppe statunitensi. I nostri media hanno quasi dimenticato la guerra in Iraq, se non per un periodico "bollettino necrologico" sui militari occupanti. Questo richiamo al video di RaiNews24 vuole essere un contributo a ricordare che l'Iraq è ancora un posto dove si muore per la guerra e dove sono stati commessi azioni contro la popolazione configurabili come veri e propri crimini contro l'umanità.

A proposito dell'utilizzo delle armi incendiarie sono necessarie alcune precisazioni. Sebbene il loro uso non sia vietato (come per le armi chimiche), è regolato dal Protocol III della UN Convention On Prohibitions Or Restrictions On The Use Of Certain Conventional Weapons Which May Be Deemed To Be Excessively Injurious Or To Have Indiscriminate Effects And Protocols (1980); in breve CCCW. In questo Protocol III si dice che le armi incendiarie non possono essere usate contro obiettivi civili, o contro obiettivi militari "collocati in mezzo a concentrazioni di civili". Il testo completo della CCCW puo' essere trovato ad esempio sul sito di GlobalSecurity all'indirizzo

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/policy/int/index.html

L'Amministrazione USA si difende sostenendo innanzitutto che le armi al fosforo sono state usate come "illuminants, tracers, smoke or signalling systems", casi esplicitamente esclusi dal novero delle armi incendiarie dal citato Protocol III. Dall'inchiesta di RaiNews24 non sembra proprio, visti i risultati sui civili. Tale difesa inoltre non si applica all'eventuale uso di Napalm o alla sua piu' recente versione usata nelle munizioni MK77 o simili sulle quali si può trovare documentazione sul sito della FAS (Federation of American Scientists) all'indirizzo

http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/dumb/mk77.htm.

Inoltre gli USA, pur non ammettendo un uso irregolare di armi incendiarie, ritengono di non essere vincolati dal Protocol III della CCCW, perche' loro non lo hanno firmato. Il fatto è che non è importante capire se un trattato sia stato violato, ma se sia stato perpetrato un crimine contro l'umanità.

E' da sottolineare infine che le armi al fosforo bianco e quelle al Napalm non sono però qualificabili come armi chimiche. I loro effetti infatti sono prodotti da reazioni chimiche (come per la dinamite, peraltro), ma vengono usate per gli effetti termici degli agenti usati, non per i loro effetti tossici. Le sostanze in questione non sono pertanto menzionate in nessun trattato relativo ad armi chimiche.

Altre informazioni sull'argomento si possono trovare ai siti

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4417024.stm
http://www.csmonitor.com/specials/sept11/dailyUpdate.html
http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/tfacts103.html
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/munitions/incendiary.htm
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/munitions/wp.htm
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/munitions/napalm.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phosphorus
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_phosphorus

Per le informazioni raletive alle armi incendiarie si ringrazia il prof. Nicola Cufaro Petroni.

Leggi l'articolo intero: http://www.peacelink.it/conflitti/a/25096.html

The United States is using napalm in Falluja. So far, the military has denied the allegations, but the proof is mounting. On Nov. 28 The Daily Mirror’s political editor, Paul Gilfeather filed a report stating: “US troops are secretly using outlawed napalm gas to wipe out remaining insurgents in and around Fallujah. News that President George W. Bush has sanctioned the use of napalm, a deadly cocktail of polystyrene and jet fuel banned by the United Nations in 1980, will stun governments around the world.”

Haditha is in western Iraq near the border of Syria. It was a popular vacation spot before the war. By 2005 it was war torn. The city also provides tactical support to a dam that supplied the region with a lot of energy, making it a strategic military launching point.

Kilo Company was the elite and highly decorated marine unit that was assigned to retake Haditha. The "Thundering Third," as it was called, was one of the most battle tested cores in the history of the marines, and had recently performed well in the second battle at Falluja.

The marines felt the citizens of Haditha had a seething disdain for the American military troops. They weren't welcomed as bringers of freedom, instead they were despised as harbingers of death.

Marine Corporal Tim Tardif was told it was going to be bad, but their first night there, they "only heard crickets."

November 19, 2005 was the day of the incident. Staff Sergeant Frank Wuterich was in charge of 4 Humvees and 11 marines.

As the unit was moving around Haditha, an improvised explosive device destroyed the 4th Humvee in the caravan and killed Lance Corporal Miguel (T.J.) Terrazas.

After looking for the "trigger man" for the IED, they saw a white sedan on the side of the road occupied by 5 men. The soldiers decided they were hostile and after no dialogue could be establish, the occupants were shot and killed.

As that was going on, the marines took small arms fire, which they decided came from a house off the road.

At the end of they day there were 9 wounded marines and Terrazas was dead. On the Iraqi side, there were 24 dead civilians including 7 children under the age of 15. but that was not noteworthy to the soldiers, "it just happens" was what one soldier said on camera.

The initial report read that 1 marine and 15 civilians died from one improvised explosive device. It was an inaccurate press release, but the soldiers did not see it as problematic because "the media usually doesn't get it right." The soldiers know the media is trying to Wag the Dog.

Requests for a formal investigation were made by the Haditha City Council. The marines learned a week after the incident that the council asked for the entire incident to be labeled a crime of war and call the killings "executions."

That led the military to believe that the city council had alliances with insurgents and terrorists. Because if you aren't "supporting our troops," you must be a terrorist.

A human rights organization happened to be in Haditha at the time, and they were quick to make a film of the deaths. A movie based on war crimes always gets attention.

Tim McGurk, a writer for Time Magazine, was introduced to this video and the entire situation became obviously suspicious.

McGurk made a formal inquiry to the military and got an incredulous response deriding the video as typical terrorist propaganda.

Within a month there was a full investigation ready to go.

Thomas Betro, who is the head of Naval Criminal Investigation Service, said this investigation had more manpower devoted to it than any other in the past 25 years.

The Iraqis wanted to be part of the investigation, but the United States didn't allow it.

What really put this into the main stream was Congressman John Murtha. He brought it up on May 17, 2006 on television. He went from CNN to Fox News talking about shit he didn't know. He spammed the term "cold blooded murder" and turned Haditha into a launching pad for political rhetoric.

This war, this election, this false democracy is all about political rhetoric.

A pervasive feeling, from the ground troops to the highest level of the American command, is that Iraqi lives are not as important or valuable as the lives of American troops.

According to everything being done in Iraq, that is true. Relatively routine was, and still is, the deaths of innocent Iraqi women and children.

This is a problem because it makes sense [to many people] to value your nation's soldiers more than the women and children of a perceived hostile nation.

On December 21, 2006, the U.S. military charged eight Marines in connection with the deaths of 24 innocent Iraqi people at Haditha. Four of the Marines, Frank Wuterich, Sanick de la Cruz, Justin Sharratt and Stephen Tatum were accused of unpremeditated murder. Tatum was further charged with negligent homicide and assault, while de la Cruz was also charged with making a false statement.

The fact that an investigation was purposely delayed brought questions to the desk of the people in charge.

Dereliction of duty is pretty bad. It means that one willfully, through negligence or culpable inefficiency, fails to perform one's expected duties.

The battalion commander, Jeffrey Chessani, was charged with one count of violating a lawful order and two counts of dereliction of duty. First Lieutenant Andrew Grayson was charged with obstruction of justice, dereliction of duty, and making a false statement, while Captain Randy Stone and Captain Lucas McConnell were charged with dereliction of duty. Stone also faced an additional count of violating a lawful order.

The Marine Corps dropped all charges against Sgt. Sanick P. Dela Cruz in exchange for immunity during testimony. Seven other Marines involved in the incident have also been granted immunity.

The court proceedings are going on at camp Pendleton right now.

What they are trying to figure out is if the marines acted appropriately under the then Current Rules of Engagement.

After the 5 males in the white sedan had been neutralized, Wuterich's people had to address the small arms fire.

The soldiers established that the small arms fire came from a near by home. That is when things got more than dicey. Wuterich, the marine in charge, was asked what he said before clearing House 1. He claims he said something like "shoot first and ask questions later."

One of the soldiers claims that he heard the sound of an AK-47 "racking" (being readied to fire) from inside the home. He threw a grenade in the house. When a grenade goes off, visibility goes to shit, nothing more than targets can be made out. Each target was taken out. They went from room to room, not entering more than 2-3 steps into any room. House 1 was cleared.

After clearing the first house, Wuterich acknowledged that women and children were dead. Once collateral damage has been discovered, it does not mean the threat has been eliminated or even diminished. The defense argues that there should be no slow down in forward progress. That is why the marines went on to House 2 and killed more innocent people.

The marines declared the entire house as hostile. When they did that, their actions become justifiable.

Many interesting questions have been raised.

Do you need to positively identify a "target" in order to open fire?

What happens when collateral damage is observed in the middle of combat?

The definitions of words like hostile, target, Torture and even "danger" have being debated and redefined.

Many obvious questions have been put to the side.

Why are so many innocent people dead?

How can we value one life over another?

None of the soldiers are charged with murder.

Important questions have been ignored.

What is war?

Is it ever justified?

These young soldiers have the moral authority of judge, jury and executioner. They have to calculate and balance maintaining troop safety, mission accomplishment, threat level from the enemy, collateral damage, and every single aspect of the situation in a split second.

They have an impossible job: To kill people, and justify it.

It would be a much better world if we did not have any rules of engagement.

Well, the sunset hours of our current Texas-sized trailer-park trash and the fruits of his own "foreign policies" have begun to ripen. Ever wonder how people from foreign lands feel about our current "foreign relations genius? Of course we'll overlook that that disaster of a trip Bush and his wife took to Argentina in Nov. 2005 . The one when Hugo Chavez made Bush looked like an idiot and the local press was reporting that the country had never seen such a mass-riots. The same Argentinian Summit where Bush retured home stumbling drunk and showed up to endorse Jerry Kilgore for Governor who ended up loosing in landslide...but I digress.

Today, Bush is visiting the Middle East. He's hoping to cinch up the final days of his "legacy" over there. Rachel Maddow lead me to a Letter to the Editor in the United Arab Emirate's Gulf News and I thought it was worth blogging.

You can read the entire letter for yourself, while I'll just plagiarize the first sixty-five sentences. Now when you read it.. Read it allowed. ...That way you'll get the full effect of what the author is trying to say.

Ready? Okay..! Ehem..! "A Letter to the Editor! ...One person's viewpoint on our President of the United States: George W. Bush" ...read out loud:

Dear Mr. President;

Lest you forget. Invasion of Iraq. Thousands of dead. Looting the National Museum. Disbanding the Iraqi army. Donald Rumsfeld. Shock and Awe. Jay Garner. Paul Bremer. Inciting sectarianism. Abu Ghraib. Thousands of detainees without charges. Torture. Oil. Ghost WMDs. The Niger connection. Halliburton. Blackwater. Deadly security contractors. Mercenaries. Fallujah. Haditha massacre. Blind support of Israel. Instigating the suffering of Gaza. Ignoring the expansion of illegal colonies. Defying United Nations resolutions. Securing "a Jewish State". Allowing Israelis to extend the destruction of Lebanon in the 2oo6 war. Providing Israel with new Bunker Buster bombs to attack Lebanese towns. The War on Terror. "The Crusade". Clash of civilisations. Where is Osama Bin Laden? Afghanistan. Bagram massacre. Bombing media offices. Guantanamo Bay. Kangaroo courts. Indefinite detention. Presidential orders to ignore Geneva Conventions. "Unlawful enemy combatants". Illegal National Security Agency wiretapping. Fingerprinting visitors. Black prisons. Kidnapping foreign citizens on foreign lands. Khalid Al Masri. Abu Omar. Maher Arar. Central Intelligence Agency. "Aggressive interrogation techniques". Destroying the torture tapes. Iran tension. Isolating Syria. Embracing Syrian opposition Iraq style. The Chavez coup. Denial of global warming. Rejecting Kyoto Protocol. Marginalisation of the United Nations. John Bolton. Paul Wolfowitz and the World Bank. Carl Rove. Alberto Gonzales. Firing attorneys. Nepotism. False democracy promises. Dick Cheney, Dick Cheney and Dick Cheney.

Ahhh... How I miss the days when we had a real President in office... tsk tsk tsk... Instead, we have Texas' finest in 'Cowboy Diplomacy'.

What's that you say?! Oh yes, I remember that saying too: "He who laughs last, laughs best."

Problem is; nobody's laughing.

New York Times skriver idag under rubriken Across America, Deadly Echoes of Foreign Battles en läsvärd artikel om krigsveteranernas andel av mord hemma i USA.

Nytimes: The New York Times found 121 cases in which veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan committed a killing in this country, or were charged with one, after their return from war. In many of those cases, combat trauma and the stress of deployment — along with alcohol abuse, family discord and other attendant problems — appear to have set the stage for a tragedy that was part destruction, part self-destruction.

Utgångspunkten i artikel är historien om hur Mr. Sepi, en tjugoårig soldat blev mördare även hemma i USA: As Mr. Sepi started home, two gang members, both large and both armed, stepped out of the darkness. Mr. Sepi said in an interview that he spied the butt of a gun, heard a boom, saw a flash and “just snapped.”In the end, one gang member lay dead, bleeding onto the pavement. The other was wounded. And Mr. Sepi fled, “breaking contact” with the enemy, as he later described it. With his rifle raised, he crept home, loaded 180 rounds of ammunition into his car and drove until police lights flashed behind him.

Behöver vi undra över antalet döda i Irak och Afghanistan? Behöver vi undra varför antalet är så gigantiskt? Behöver vi undra om dödandet i Irak skiljer sig från dödandet annorstädes? En soldat gör sin plikt här... och där... enligt soldaten själv. Så som han ser det. Men om soldaten är psykotisk, bränd av Post Traumatisk stress, plågad av det han och hans enhet gjort mot andra människor under extrema förhållanden... Det är bara att vänta och se. Priset kommer det amerikanska samhället att betala hemma, inte i Falluja eller Mahmoudiya.

Den amerikanska soldaten som är misstänkt för våldtäkt på Abir al-Janabi och mordet på hennes familj i Mahmoudiya, Irak. Abir och hennes släkt vägrade gå med på att ta emot pengar i en förlikning och säger att huset där ohyggligheterna begicks ska förbli ett monument över amerikanernas brott i Irak.

New York Times   SvD  DN  DN1

[EN]

""" It was when I saw little Ali's ruined body that I stopped being just a reporter and became a true embed. The scene was a makeshift field hospital in Falluja. A missile fired at the hospital has left the walls of the room Ali lies in pockmarked with shrapnel.

Glass crunches underfoot. Four-year-old Ali is lying in a cot, the mattress matted with dried blood. He is bleeding from a horrific groin wound and his left leg has been amputated above the knee. His left arm is bandaged and bleeding, his face badly cut. His father brushes away the flies buzzing around Ali's wounds. It is a scene of almost utter hopelessness.

Ali is one of the only survivors of an extended family, bombed the day before by a jet, probably an F-16. He might live, but only if he is evacuated to a Baghdad hospital within hours. Ambulances have tried to evacuate him and other seriously wounded casualties. They were turned back at US checkpoints by troops carrying out orders: no one in and no one out. There is one last hope: I got past the checkpoints with my press ID and my passport, and I could go back with Ali. It was a white-knuckle ride back to Baghdad with my guide, but 90 minutes later Ali was being treated by doctors at an Italian coalition hospital, who were shocked to see their first Falluja evacuee. The surgery saved Ali's life, but not his arm.

Over the next few days I got to know the back roads from Falluja to Baghdad almost as well as the field hospital's filthy corridors as I evacuated the injured. I am left with vivid memories: the stench of a burned man's flesh; the dead eyes of two children, a boy and girl under 11 who were shot in the head by snipers.

I volunteered to ride in ambulances evacuating the wounded. Surely they don't shoot ambulances? In fact, US snipers were targeting ambulances. I learned to pick out the beams of sniper rifles.

I remember the medics' anger when the hospital's last working ambulance carrying British and American volunteers returned shot to pieces, how stunned they were when American, British and Australian volunteers came under fire after declaring their nationalities to US troops.

Some days before I met Ali, my guide and I had been seized at gunpoint after we'd run into a mojahedin ambush of US scouts. Over tea, we had agreed to continue our work as reporters embedded with them. The mojahedin threw open their doors and their lives to us, escorting us past firezones to safety.

Embedding has come at a price: eating, sleeping and being bombed with the mojahedin means sharing more than chicken and rice. It means listening out for helicopters and feeling helpless about injured families trapped behind "enemy" lines. It means sharing the same revulsion as maimed bodies are tipped into hospital beds. But what's the point of trying to report a war from an embedded position in the fortified Hotel Palestine, miles from the frontline? """ [Lee Gordon , THE GUARDIAN ]

~~~~~

[RO - traducere adaptata ]

""" Atunci cand l-am vazut pe micul Ali macelarit, am incetat sa mai fiu un reporter si am devenit cu adevarat „unul de-al lor”. Scena se desfasoara la un spital de campanie din Falluja. Un proiectil tras asupra spitalului a imbracat peretii camerei unde Ali zacea in schije.
Sticla scrasneste sub picioare. Ali, un baietel de patru ani, zace pe o saltea imbibata cu sange uscat. Sangereaza dintr-o rana oribila in vintre, iar piciorul stang i-a fost amputat deasupra genunchiului. Bratul stang este bandajat si sangereaza, fata este taiata rau. Tatal lui indeparteaza mustele care bazaie in preajma ranilor. Este scena unei deznadejdi aproape totale.

Ali e unul din putinii supravietuitori ai numeroasei sale familii, lovite cu o zi inainte de un proiectil lansat de un avion F-16. Ar putea trai, dar numai daca va fi evacuat la un spital din Bagdad, cat mai repede. Dar cum? A fost intors din drum la unul din punctele de control de catre soldatii americani. Ordinele sunt clare: nimeni nu intra, nimeni nu iese. A mai ramas o singura speranta. Eu am trecut de control cu legitimatia mea de presa; as putea sa ma intorc ducandu-l cu mine pe Ali.

Dupa o cursa nebuneasca, nouazeci de minute mai tarziu Ali se afla la Bagdad, in mainile unui medic italian dintr-un spital al coalitiei. Medicul s-a ingrozit vazandu-l pe primul evacuat din Falluja. Operatia a salvat viata lui Ali. Nu i-a salvat insa si bratul.

In zilele urmatoare am ajuns sa cunosc drumul dintre Falluja si Baghdad aproape la fel de bine ca pe mizerabilele coridoare ale spitalului de campanie. Am evacuat raniti, ramanand cu amintiri de nesters: duhoarea de carne arsa, ochii fara viata ai unor copii sub 10 ani, impuscati in cap de lunetisti.

M-am oferit sa insotesc ambulantele care evacuau ranitii. Sigur nu trag in ambulante? De fapt, ba da, lunetistii americani trag si in ambulante. Am fost invatat sa detectez lucirea pustii cu luneta in bataia soarelui.

Imi amintesc furia medicilor, cand ultima ambulanta functionala a spitalului s-a intors, carand bucati din trupurile unor voluntari americani, britanici si australieni; imi amintesc cat de uimiti au fost cand au aflat ca acei oameni au fost impuscati de militari ai coalitiei, dupa ce isi declinasera identitatea…

Cu doar cateva zile inainte sa-l intalnesc pe Ali, ghidul meu si cu mine fusesem prinsi intr-un schimb de focuri, intr-o ambuscada intinsa de mujahedini. Apoi, la o ceasca de ceai, am hotarat amandoi sa ne continuam munca de reporteri, impreuna, amestecati printre ei. Mujahedinii ne-au primit si ne-au escortat pana in spatele zonelor de conflict.

„A te integra”, a deveni „unul de-al lor”, avea si un pret. Sa mananci, sa dormi si sa suporti bombardamente impreuna cu mujahedinii inseamna mai mult decat sa iti imparti mancarea cu ei. Inseamna sa auzi sunetul elicopterelor „noastre” si sa te simti la fel de nefolositor pentru familiile prinse dincolo de „liniile inamice”. Inseamna sa impartasesti aceeasi revolta cand trupuri mutilate sunt aruncate in paturi de spital.

Dar ce sens ar putea avea sa relatezi despre razboi din fortificatul „Hotel Palestina”, la multe mile departe de linia frontului? """

*** Lee Gordon este jurnalist independent britanic. Acest articol a fost scris pentru cotidianul britanic THE GUARDIAN .

Lessons learned for Jill and the Monitor about her campaign for freedom. What's happened to Alan's family?

By Peter Grier | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

On April 2, 2006, a white Lufthansa 747 with the designation "Hamburg" written on its side taxied up to a gate at Boston's Logan Airport. At 12:22 p.m., Jill Carroll stepped off the plane and onto US soil.

As she passed through customs, agents and other officials on duty crowded around for a chance to see her. Whisked into a waiting car, she was driven to the Monitor's headquarters in Boston's Back Bay, a police escort around her and news helicopters overhead.

Jill was traveling light. She'd left a big yellow bag of clothes and toiletries from her captivity in the Green Zone in Baghdad. She'd decompressed there for a day, talking to members of the US Embassy's Hostage Working Group, before traveling on an aircraft carrying American casualties to Ramstein Air Force Base in Landstuhl, Germany.

	ZIPPY! Jill's family shouted her nickname out of the window as she pulled up in front of a Boston apartment on April 2, moments before they were finally reunited. MELANIE STETSON FREEMAN - STAFF Photos: Homecoming photos

In Boston, her car went straight into the underground garage of the Christian Science church headquarters. In a preplanned bit of evasion, she was led through basement corridors under the complex to a loading dock on a nearby side street. She then jumped into a blue van - easily missing the media horde camped outside the Monitor building.

The van went only a few blocks, to a nearby church-owned townhouse. There, Jim, Mary Beth, and Katie crowded around an open window, yelling her nickname, "Zippy!"

Jill met them coming down the hallway in a whole-family embrace. She wept and said, "I'm sorry." She was home.

	SISTERS REUNITED: Katie and Jill Carroll hug in Boston on April 2 upon Jill's return from Iraq. Their parents, Jim and Mary Beth Carroll, look on. MELANIE STETSON FREEMAN - STAFF Photos: Homecoming photos

Nearly five months on, what's to be learned from Jill Carroll's kidnapping and release?

Monitor editors and correspondents were heartened by the global condemnation of the kidnapping, especially from Muslim religious leaders and even militant groups, such as Hamas. They remain proud of the media campaign they helped mount, from the solicitation of statements on Jill's behalf to the public service announcements that ran in the Iraqi media. They believe it was targeted to the right audience - the Middle East - and well placed. They know the kidnappers saw some of it.

It's presumptuous to say it led directly to her release, but "I do think that changed the mental climate," says Richard Bergenheim, editor of the Monitor.

Another obvious conclusion is that Iraq has become a very dangerous place for the news media. More than 100 journalists, including interpreters and assistants, have died there since March 2003.

Since Jill's kidnapping, the Monitor has upgraded its security measures in Baghdad - both because of what had happened to her and because of the worsening situation on the ground. Editors won't detail those measures, so as not to undermine their effectiveness. The paper has kept a British security firm on retainer for consultation.

As for Jill herself, she says that her experience taught her about priorities. Throughout her 82-day ordeal, she missed her family and her friends. Work and success didn't seem so important anymore. "I never once wished I'd filed one more story," she says.

But she doesn't regret going to Iraq in the first place. She was doing what she had always wanted to do - foreign reporting. Since her release, she has returned to Egypt, and is glad of it. She experienced again the distinctive culture of the Islamic world in a peaceful context.

"What happened to me is not the whole Middle East," she says.

Jill is no longer a freelancer. To provide financial support in anticipation of her eventual release, the Monitor quietly made Jill a full-time employee a week after she was abducted. This fall, she's been accepted into a journalism fellowship program at a major university. After that, she plans to return to writing from overseas.

Why was she released? Probably no one really knows except for her kidnappers. Maybe the public pressure worked. Maybe private whispers via Western and Middle Eastern intelligence convinced influential Sunnis that harming Jill wasn't in their best interest.

Maybe as the political situation changed, so did the priorities of her kidnappers. Maybe the kidnappers just got what they wanted - publicity or the release of women from Abu Ghraib prison. Or maybe Jill herself - the smart, young American who spoke Arabic - helped alter her captors' plans.

"One of the most effective weapons against terrorism is the truth. The truth was that Jill Carroll was not the enemy of her captors. Her father spoke that truth, and the rest of the world repeated it," says Christopher Voss, special agent with the FBI's Crisis Negotiation Unit in Quantico, Va.

As far as the Monitor and Jill's family can determine, no ransom changed hands to win her release.

Earlier this month, the US military announced that it had captured four of Jill's suspected kidnappers, after raiding a total of four locations in Baghdad, Abu Ghraib, and a village west of Fallujah. US sources in Baghdad have told staff writer Scott Peterson that the man Jill knew as "Abu Ahmed" (aka Sheikh Sadoun, say US military sources) was arrested by US Marines on May 19. The others in custody are guards, not the top figures in the group.

Members of murdered translator Alan Enwiya's immediate family have left Iraq, where they felt endangered. They are applying for US government permission to join their extended family in the US.

Jill never met the man who shot Alan. She was told that Alan's killer died a few weeks later during an insurgent military operation.

Driver Adnan Abbas, having survived the abduction, was initially a suspect. He passed a polygraph test, and was cleared by Iraqi police. He, his wife, and four children (including a newborn) have also moved to another country. Their future remains uncertain, but their ambition is to live and work in the US.

The Monitor has established two funds to help these families start new lives. Among the donations received so far: The $800 cash the mujahideen gave Jill just prior to her release. She plans to sell the gold necklace and donate those funds, as well.

How to help
	HOWARD LAFRANCHI/THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR

Alan Enwiya is one of nearly 100 journalists and media assistants killed in Iraq since March 2003. Alan (left side of photo) is survived by his wife, Fairuz, his two children, Martin and Mary Ann, and his parents. They have left Iraq and hope to move to the US where they have relatives.

Jill Carroll's driver, Adnan Abbas, is a witness to Alan's murder. He, his wife, and their four children (including a newborn) have also fled Iraq for their own safety.

In response to readers, the Monitor has established funds to help each family start a new life. Donations may be sent to:

The Alan Enwiya Fund
c/o The Christian Science Monitor
One Norway Street
Boston, MA 02115

The Adnan Abbas Fund
c/o The Christian Science Monitor
One Norway Street
Boston, MA 02115

Donations can also be made online.

Lessons learned for Jill and the Monitor about her campaign for freedom. What's happened to Alan's family?

By Peter Grier | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

On April 2, 2006, a white Lufthansa 747 with the designation "Hamburg" written on its side taxied up to a gate at Boston's Logan Airport. At 12:22 p.m., Jill Carroll stepped off the plane and onto US soil.

As she passed through customs, agents and other officials on duty crowded around for a chance to see her. Whisked into a waiting car, she was driven to the Monitor's headquarters in Boston's Back Bay, a police escort around her and news helicopters overhead.

Jill was traveling light. She'd left a big yellow bag of clothes and toiletries from her captivity in the Green Zone in Baghdad. She'd decompressed there for a day, talking to members of the US Embassy's Hostage Working Group, before traveling on an aircraft carrying American casualties to Ramstein Air Force Base in Landstuhl, Germany.

	ZIPPY! Jill's family shouted her nickname out of the window as she pulled up in front of a Boston apartment on April 2, moments before they were finally reunited. MELANIE STETSON FREEMAN - STAFF Photos: Homecoming photos

In Boston, her car went straight into the underground garage of the Christian Science church headquarters. In a preplanned bit of evasion, she was led through basement corridors under the complex to a loading dock on a nearby side street. She then jumped into a blue van - easily missing the media horde camped outside the Monitor building.

The van went only a few blocks, to a nearby church-owned townhouse. There, Jim, Mary Beth, and Katie crowded around an open window, yelling her nickname, "Zippy!"

Jill met them coming down the hallway in a whole-family embrace. She wept and said, "I'm sorry." She was home.

	SISTERS REUNITED: Katie and Jill Carroll hug in Boston on April 2 upon Jill's return from Iraq. Their parents, Jim and Mary Beth Carroll, look on. MELANIE STETSON FREEMAN - STAFF Photos: Homecoming photos

Nearly five months on, what's to be learned from Jill Carroll's kidnapping and release?

Monitor editors and correspondents were heartened by the global condemnation of the kidnapping, especially from Muslim religious leaders and even militant groups, such as Hamas. They remain proud of the media campaign they helped mount, from the solicitation of statements on Jill's behalf to the public service announcements that ran in the Iraqi media. They believe it was targeted to the right audience - the Middle East - and well placed. They know the kidnappers saw some of it.

It's presumptuous to say it led directly to her release, but "I do think that changed the mental climate," says Richard Bergenheim, editor of the Monitor.

Another obvious conclusion is that Iraq has become a very dangerous place for the news media. More than 100 journalists, including interpreters and assistants, have died there since March 2003.

Since Jill's kidnapping, the Monitor has upgraded its security measures in Baghdad - both because of what had happened to her and because of the worsening situation on the ground. Editors won't detail those measures, so as not to undermine their effectiveness. The paper has kept a British security firm on retainer for consultation.

As for Jill herself, she says that her experience taught her about priorities. Throughout her 82-day ordeal, she missed her family and her friends. Work and success didn't seem so important anymore. "I never once wished I'd filed one more story," she says.

But she doesn't regret going to Iraq in the first place. She was doing what she had always wanted to do - foreign reporting. Since her release, she has returned to Egypt, and is glad of it. She experienced again the distinctive culture of the Islamic world in a peaceful context.

"What happened to me is not the whole Middle East," she says.

Jill is no longer a freelancer. To provide financial support in anticipation of her eventual release, the Monitor quietly made Jill a full-time employee a week after she was abducted. This fall, she's been accepted into a journalism fellowship program at a major university. After that, she plans to return to writing from overseas.

Why was she released? Probably no one really knows except for her kidnappers. Maybe the public pressure worked. Maybe private whispers via Western and Middle Eastern intelligence convinced influential Sunnis that harming Jill wasn't in their best interest.

Maybe as the political situation changed, so did the priorities of her kidnappers. Maybe the kidnappers just got what they wanted - publicity or the release of women from Abu Ghraib prison. Or maybe Jill herself - the smart, young American who spoke Arabic - helped alter her captors' plans.

"One of the most effective weapons against terrorism is the truth. The truth was that Jill Carroll was not the enemy of her captors. Her father spoke that truth, and the rest of the world repeated it," says Christopher Voss, special agent with the FBI's Crisis Negotiation Unit in Quantico, Va.

As far as the Monitor and Jill's family can determine, no ransom changed hands to win her release.

Earlier this month, the US military announced that it had captured four of Jill's suspected kidnappers, after raiding a total of four locations in Baghdad, Abu Ghraib, and a village west of Fallujah. US sources in Baghdad have told staff writer Scott Peterson that the man Jill knew as "Abu Ahmed" (aka Sheikh Sadoun, say US military sources) was arrested by US Marines on May 19. The others in custody are guards, not the top figures in the group.

Members of murdered translator Alan Enwiya's immediate family have left Iraq, where they felt endangered. They are applying for US government permission to join their extended family in the US.

Jill never met the man who shot Alan. She was told that Alan's killer died a few weeks later during an insurgent military operation.

Driver Adnan Abbas, having survived the abduction, was initially a suspect. He passed a polygraph test, and was cleared by Iraqi police. He, his wife, and four children (including a newborn) have also moved to another country. Their future remains uncertain, but their ambition is to live and work in the US.

The Monitor has established two funds to help these families start new lives. Among the donations received so far: The $800 cash the mujahideen gave Jill just prior to her release. She plans to sell the gold necklace and donate those funds, as well.

How to help
	HOWARD LAFRANCHI/THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR

Alan Enwiya is one of nearly 100 journalists and media assistants killed in Iraq since March 2003. Alan (left side of photo) is survived by his wife, Fairuz, his two children, Martin and Mary Ann, and his parents. They have left Iraq and hope to move to the US where they have relatives.

Jill Carroll's driver, Adnan Abbas, is a witness to Alan's murder. He, his wife, and their four children (including a newborn) have also fled Iraq for their own safety.

In response to readers, the Monitor has established funds to help each family start a new life. Donations may be sent to:

The Alan Enwiya Fund
c/o The Christian Science Monitor
One Norway Street
Boston, MA 02115

The Adnan Abbas Fund
c/o The Christian Science Monitor
One Norway Street
Boston, MA 02115

Donations can also be made online.

Make another video, Jill is told, and you'll be let go. But she doesn't believe it until they give her a gold necklace and eight $100 bills.

By Jill Carroll and Peter Grier | Staff writers of The Christian Science Monitor

(P.G.) The evening of March 29, Katie Carroll went to a party with some of her friends. Earlier that day, she had gone on the Arab satellite television network, Al Arabiya, to plead for her sister's life.

When she got home that night, Katie imagined - as she had before - how great it would be if the phone would ring, and she would answer it, and it would be Jill, and this would all be over.

Just like that.

• • •

(J.C.) Little Hajar toddled away from the sagging bookcase holding a chapter of the Koran in her hand. She was heading for the foot-pedaled sewing machine, where a shiny candy wrapper had caught her attention.

She grabbed the wrapper, then showed me her treasures. She wasn't yet 2 years old and was so small that our eyes were at the same level as I sat cross-legged on the floor of the house west of Fallujah. I'd been here almost two weeks and March was almost over.

"What's that? What's that? Oooh, wow," I said, admiringly.

Hajar was great to play with despite the fact that her dress-and-jacket outfits were often smeared with yogurt or other messy food. Sometimes she'd bang on the door of my room to be let in. She was my only friend, the one person in this mujahideen household not responsible for my captivity.

This time, as the candy wrapper sparkled in her hand, the door suddenly opened. I looked up, expecting to see Hajar's mother or father coming to bring me tea or food as usual.

Instead, I glimpsed Abu Nour's visage as he entered. As always, the leader of these mujahideen had come out of nowhere, like an apparition. I cast my eyes to the ground, afraid he'd think I knew too much about his face.

Hajar collapsed into the velveteen of my dishdasha tunic and buried her face in it, afraid of this stranger.

"I know how ya feel, kid," I thought as I stroked her fine hair and small, motionless back.

What did Ink Eyes want? I hadn't seen him for three weeks. He'd promised then that he would release me in three days - a promise that had been just as worthless as the many other times he'd vowed I was on the brink of freedom.

I had learned to stop believing the promises, to protect myself from that terrible tease called hope.

I used to cling to every word Abu Nour said, analyzing them for days afterward for any hint of my fate. Now, after almost three months of captivity, I just didn't have the mental energy to do that anymore.

Instead, all I wanted was to minimize pain and have good days. A few minutes of playing with a child or helping women in the kitchen was an attainable goal. Seeing my family again - that was impossibly far away, a dream.

I stroked Hajar's hair, only half-listening to Abu Nour drone on. I just wished he would go so Hajar and I could resume our game.

"Well, today is Monday, and tomorrow is Tuesday," Abu Nour was saying. "So maybe in three days we'll let you go."

Twenty-four hours before my release he would return and we could have a final conversation about the mujahideen, he added.

I'd heard all this a million times.

"Oh thank you, sir," I said, trying to smile as he left.

"Yeah, right," I thought. "Don't listen to him. Don't get your hopes up, Jill. Just don't do it."

This was my theory: They were worried about my mental state. Since my bitter blow-ups with the Muj Brothers, Abu Qarrar and Abu Hassan, the mujahideen seemed to think I was fragile. Abu Nour hadn't seen me in awhile, and he had just come to say hello. Maybe he thought a dose of false hope would keep me from doing something drastic.

It was late March. "Dad's birthday is May 6," I thought. "If they let me out before May 6, that will be OK. That's all I really want."

Abu Nour had come on Monday. Tuesday was OK: I got to play with Hajar. Then Wednesday came around. I can't remember why, but I lost it.

I sobbed the whole day. Quietly, so they wouldn't hear me. I was so tired, so worn out. I'd been fooling myself, thinking some days were happy. It had been three months and I was drifting further and further away from my family, from my life. Enough was enough. "Let me out!" I screamed to myself. "Let me out!"

That night, I was sitting in my room in the dark, all upset. And I heard Abu Nour's voice.

They brought me into the sitting room after dinner. As always, I smelled his distinctive cologne before I saw him. Abu Nour sat cross-legged on the floor, his head bent toward the ground.

He had told me he was going to come back 24 hours before I was released.

"Tomorrow morning, we're going to let you go," he said. "We're going to drive you to the Iraqi Islamic Party and you will call your newspaper and you will be free."

I had no reaction. He might as well have said, "Here, have some tea."

Then came the catch: I needed to make one more video. And I needed to forget much of what he had told me about himself and his group, as well as much of what I had seen.

I had to forget about the Majlis, or council, of mujahideen that he had claimed to lead. I had to say his group was medium-sized, not big, not small.

"You can't talk about the women and children," said Ink Eyes. "You have to say you were in one room the whole time and ... you were treated very well."

I was supposed to "interview" him one last time, and he would tell me what I was supposed to say to the world. He handed me a notebook in which I was to write down his words.

	JILLIAN TAMAKI

"Anything outside the notebook is forbidden," he said.

Abu Nour wanted to make the video that night, but the power went out. So we made it in the morning. I didn't know then that within a day it would be on the Internet.

After the filming, they put me back in my little room. The night before, they'd told me that they would pay me for my computer, which they would keep, and that they would bring me a gift.

Abu Rasha, the large man who served as the head of the mujahideen cell I spent most of my time with, once had told me that when they let me go, they would give me a gold necklace, just as they had done for Giuliana Sgrena, an Italian journalist who'd been kidnapped in Baghdad in early 2005 and held for a month.

I still wasn't excited. Money and gold, that was my ticket to freedom. I figured that if they did give me those things, then the end might truly be at hand.

Abu Nour said goodbye. I stammered out some kind of reply. Then I waited, and waited. Finally, the woman of the house rushed in with new clothes for me to wear. There weren't proper shoes, so she gave me her own black high-heeled patent leather sandals. They fit perfectly.

They rushed me into a car waiting outside. I still didn't have gold. I still didn't have money. I began to panic.

Abu Rasha was next to me in the back seat. He leaned over me, or so it felt, as I panted, blind, beneath three black scarves.

"Jill, we asked the Americans for the women prisoners and there were none," he said. Normally his voice was slow and quiet; now it was loud.

"Oh," I said, crouched in darkness, blind, hot, and breathless.

"And then we asked the government for money, and they gave us none," he said.

"Oh yes, I know," I said.

"Now we're going to kill you," he said, agitated and close to my head.

I thought they were going to do it. I imagined the gun. All they'd told me that day had been lies.

I knew I couldn't be afraid. I had to make them think they were good people who weren't capable of killing me.

I forced a laugh.

"No, Abu Rasha, you're my brother, you wouldn't do that!" I said, trying to keep the desperation out of my voice.

He laughed, more convincingly than me. "No, we're not going to kill you," he said. "We're going to take you to the Iraqi Islamic Party and drop you off."

I went limp. Tired, frozen, spent, I didn't know what was going on anymore. I couldn't make sense, couldn't analyze. I had nothing left.

We drove and drove and drove. They kept calling on cellphones to the car ahead, to make sure the way was clear. Finally, Abu Rasha told me to lift my scarves and keep my eyes straight down. He started placing $100 bills in my hand. For my computer, I got $400, and then another $400 for my trouble.

Then he said, "Oh yes, we got you this," and shoved a box into my narrow field of vision. He opened it and pulled out a gold necklace, with a pendant attached.

The money. The gold. Maybe they were really going to let me go.

We switched cars. I was in the front seat, with Abu Rasha driving. He began a monologue, angrier than anything I had ever heard from him. He spewed venom and expletives in English at the American military and government. He railed against the occupation, the war, and the Abu Ghraib prison.

I assured him that I wouldn't tell the US military or American government that I was free, and I meant it. I would only call my journalist friends to come get me and have them drive me to the airport.

	View the neighborhood where Jill was dropped off and the Iraqi Islamic Party office where she was taken in our interactive map.

I had spent nearly three months feverishly trying to convince my captors that I wasn't a CIA agent. If I was dropped off and immediately sought help from US officials, the mujahideen would assume that I really was a spy, I thought.

And I was afraid of what they then might do. The mujahideen had done everything they could to drill this message into my head over the past three months: They were omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent. There was no escape from them, even in the Green Zone. Maybe not even in the US.

Abu Nour had once told me they had eyes everywhere, and that they'd be watching me after I was released. I'd long imagined a car bomb crashing into a military Humvee sent to collect me.

Then Abu Rasha pulled the car up to a curb. He handed me a note written in Arabic explaining who I was and told me to get out, lift my scarves, and walk a few hundred meters back.

The car door opened. It was Abu Qarrar, one of my Muj Brothers guards who'd appeared from nowhere. He handed me my gifts and a big bag full of all the clothes I'd accumulated over the last three months.

So my least favorite captor was the last one I saw. I said, "OK, Abu Qarrar, OK, goodbye, goodbye." Then I hauled away, tottering down the road in an insurgent's wife's high-heeled sandals, grappling with my stuff, scarves flapping in my face, an ex-hostage bag lady returning to the world.

I found the Iraqi Islamic Party (IIP) office and handed the man behind the desk the note. I was panicky, terrified, starting to shake. I just wanted to use the phone, I mumbled in Arabic.

Instead, the man ran to notify the manager of this IIP branch office. "The same journalist?!" the manager said incredulously after reading the note. Debate over what to do with me followed. I felt weak, lost. All I knew was that I wanted to call my hotel.

Things moved quickly after that. They tried to hustle me into a white car for a drive to IIP headquarters. I resisted; I just wanted the hotel. I asked again to use the office phone, but was told that none of them worked.

A cellphone appeared, with a call for me. It was Tariq al-Hashemi, the IIP leader, later to become the new government's vice president. I told Mr. Hashemi that I wanted him to call my hotel, and if no one from the Monitor was there, to call the Washington Post office and have them come get me. He said he would also call the US Embassy. I begged him not to, but he insisted.

	TARIQ AL-HASHEMI: The head of the Iraqi Islamic Party gave Jill Carroll a gift of a Koran shortly after her release on March 30. APTN/AP Photos: Reactions to Jill's release

After a few minutes, a convoy of white SUVs and trucks with flashing lights and gunmen roared into the driveway and streets around the office. The IIP officials brought me downstairs and hurried me into a bulletproof luxury vehicle, complete with leather seats. I realized it was Hashemi's personal security detail. The lights and guns and militarylike atmosphere terrified me.

I wanted to shout, "I don't want this!" as we zoomed away.

Things were going horribly wrong. The mujahideen were going to see me; they were going to kill us. They would think I lied, that I hadn't called my colleagues to come get me in a low-profile way. I doubled over in the seat, hiding below the ledge of the tinted windows.

A man sitting next to me laughed and said, "Why are you doing this?"

"I don't want them to see me," I said. Didn't he understand?! I wanted to shout at them to let me out, to stop, to make the cars with the flashing lights go away. We tore down Baghdad's streets, a giant screaming convoy with guns sticking out everywhere. I was terrified that every ordinary car we passed was a car bomb sent by the mujahideen to kill me for breaking my promise.

"Be careful of car bombs, be careful," I told the man driving in Arabic. I checked the location of the door lock and handle in case the vehicle went up in flames and I needed to get out in a hurry.

The guards looked bemused, as if I was crazy, and said not to worry.

For me, my release is one of the hardest memories of my captivity. I don't know why. Suddenly, my structure was gone. There was no one to tell me what to do.

My body was free, but my mind was not. I was conditioned to be whatever anyone around me wanted me to be. I had no opinions, no self-will. I didn't know how to make decisions.

The IIP headquarters was a blur. They wanted to make a video of me, and they had me write a letter of thanks and make an audio recording. This was strictly to ensure that no one would accuse them of being my kidnappers, they said. The video was then widely broadcast.

Two close friends from the Washington Post, including Ellen Knickmeyer, the Iraq bureau chief, showed up. Someone gave me a phone, and I called my twin sister, Katie.

	KATIE CARROLL: Jill's twin sister left her home in Washington on March 30 for a reunion in Boston. CHRIS GARDNER/AP Photos: Reactions to Jill's release

(P.G.) At 5:45 A.M. on March 30, Katie was awakened by a ringing phone. She rolled over, looked at the caller ID, and saw that someone in Iraq was trying to reach her. In an instant, she knew.

They say that dreams come true, but seldom in life is it given to any of us to have such a perfect moment.

She grabbed the phone. "Katie, it's me," said the voice on the other end of the line. "I'm free." Jill and Katie both started to cry.

As the Carroll family's chief communicator, Katie immediately launched into contact mode, calling people on a predetermined list, working from the East Coast toward the West as the sun rose.

She didn't have to call her parents. Jim and Mary Beth Carroll got their own wake-up calls from Jill.

At the Monitor's headquarters in Boston, the news spread quickly. Editors began looking through the happiest of their premade plans, "Carroll Release Logistics."

In Cairo, staff writer Dan Murphy was having lunch with a journalist colleague. He and Scott Peterson had begun rotating in and out of Baghdad every few weeks. A friend from Reuters sent him an instant message: "Congratulations on Jill being free."

Mr. Murphy didn't believe it. After all, over the course of the past months he'd had nine or so false reports of Jill's freedom. He called back and told his friend nothing had happened. "No, man," his friend insisted, "we're just snapping it out of the States. 'The Christian Science Monitor confirms...' "

• • •

(J.C.) I made the video for the IIP. My state of mind was reflected in the fact that I felt guilty for delaying the start of filming so I could call members of my family.

I learned that Scott Peterson was still in Baghdad. I was sure he would have fled. I called him on Ellen's cellphone. He was at the CNN offices where he was working on a new set of public service videos about me.

I was still on the phone with Scott when the US military arrived. I was so afraid of the soldiers. "What should I do, Scott?" He told me if they were there, they were the surest way to safety. I hung onto my friend Ellen from the Post as we went downstairs.

We got into an armored vehicle. I still had my big bag of stuff. I figured the mujahideen were watching. They were watching everything.

The hatches closed. We were driving along, and I finally started to relax.

	VIDEO AMBUSH: Moments after being brought to the Iraqi Islamic Party headquarters, Jill Carroll was interviewed by party officials for 'internal use.' The video was released to the media within hours. APTN/AP Photos: Reactions to Jill's release

One of the soldiers pulled out a picture of me that he had been carrying with him. "I don't need this anymore," he said, and gave it to me.

Another pulled off a flag that was attached with Velcro to his uniform, and gave that to me, too.

A third, sitting to my left, said "We've been looking for you for a long time."

How did these men know who I was? I didn't understand why they had a picture of me. I had no idea how much coverage my kidnapping had received.

I sat and talked with Ellen. After a few minutes, she said, "You can take off your hijab now."

"No, no," I said.

I waited a minute. Then I said, "Well, actually ... I guess I can."

Jill's two guards watch cartoons and the Koran channel. But tension grows as she becomes more desperate.

By Jill Carroll and Peter Grier | Staff writers of The Christian Science Monitor

(J.C.) Abu Qarrar was young, rotund, and seemed new to the mujahideen lifestyle. He hadn't memorized much of the Koran, unlike his more senior counterparts. He sometimes sneaked glances at the women on the music-video channels when he thought no one was looking.

To show off, he would run in place, then kick his right leg in the air and fling his arms forward in an awkward demonstration of kung fu.

Abu Hassan was older, athletic, and seething with devotion to jihad. He seemed a veteran fighter - although, like Abu Qarrar, he loved the "Cat and Mouse" cartoons. Yes, they watched "Tom and Jerry."

When he was bored - which was often - he'd use his cellphone to record himself giving fake fiery sermons standing at the top of the stairs as if on a mosque pulpit. Then he'd play them back, to hear how he'd sound if he were a famous imam.

These two men were my most constant guards. They reported to Abu Ahmed, one of Abu Nour's lieutenants. Abu Ahmed was an Islamic scholar who had just finished an Arabic translation of a Henry Kissinger biography and was reading 'How to Win Friends and Influence People" by Dale Carnegie.

The two guards weren't at every house where I was held, and others came and went even when they were present. But during my captivity I spent more time with them than anyone else. They were my up-close-and-personal examples of the rank and file of the Iraqi mujahideen.

Abu Qarrar and Abu Hassan were also starkly different people, despite the fact that they called each other "brother." In this, they were symbolic of the contrasts I saw in the larger group of mujahideen.

Some members were clever; others, not so much. Some seemed dangerous; most were devout. A few were sympathetic. A few were educated. At least one of the women appeared bitter about her lot in life.

As far as I knew, all were native Iraqis.

As the weeks of my captivity turned into months, Abu Qarrar and Abu Hassan became tense and unhappy. They were bored with guard duty and tired of inaction. They became more petty and controlling toward me.

Meanwhile, I was increasingly desperate, fearful, and angry. I felt I was beginning to lose my self-control.

The result was conflict between me and the Muj Brothers which, if not for the context, might have seemed adolescent. We couldn't let little slights go. We were like animals in a cage, locked in all together.

• • •

	GLOBAL SUPPORT: In Rome, a poster of Jill was hung from city hall on Feb. 5. Pier Paolo Cito/AP Photos: Efforts to free Jill

(P.G.) The Feb. 26 deadline tied to the third video came and went. The kidnappers didn't call. They didn't write. They issued no new demands. But public interest in Jill Carroll's plight didn't flag. The Monitor's Team Jill had adopted a strategy early on to take a low-key US media response. They followed the advice of experts who had analyzed The Wall Street Journal's efforts to free Daniel Pearl after he was kidnapped in Pakistan: ignore the Western media, focus on Iraqi media. The kidnappers and ordinary Iraqis who might generate tips won't be watching Larry King.

Still, Jill's abduction struck a remarkable global chord. There was a series of "Free Jill" rallies in Paris. A giant poster of her was hung from the city hall in Rome. Students at the University of Massachusetts (where Jill went to school) and at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor (where Jill grew up) held rallies and candlelight vigils. Thousands sent donations to a fund set up to support the family of Alan, Jill's Iraqi interpreter. A jazz song was composed in her honor. Paintings and poems were sent to the Monitor offices. And prayers were said at hundreds of churches, mosques, and synagogues around the United States.

A 45-year-old man from Fremont, Calif., was one of half a dozen Americans who offered to take Jill's place. "I would like to emphasize the fact that I am definitely not suicidal nor would I relish having my life cut short....

"I'm offering myself as a replacement for her as a hostage or even as a potential martyr for her outstanding work as a balanced and compassionate journalist," he wrote.

(J.C.) Abu Qarrar claimed to have been part of the team that abducted me, but if he was, I didn't see him. I do remember that he was the guard who sat outside the door of my bedroom on the first night I was held.

After all, he was hard to miss, with a girth that advertised his eating habits and a tattoo of Arabic writing on his inner left arm.

View our interactive map.

He told me he was 26. At the beginning of my ordeal he was unmarried. Later, he left for a period of time for an arranged wedding to a 13-year-old bride.

He didn't know what e-mail was. He'd never seen a computer. He marveled at how a can opener worked. There were times when we got along well. But overall I thought he acted like a spoiled little boy who enjoyed his authority over another human being - namely, me.

I learned this early on. During the first full day of my captivity, he kept peeking in the door, presumably to make sure I wasn't trying to escape. I'd heard that it was best for hostages to try to make captors see them as human beings, to elicit sympathy, so I tried talking to him. I asked him to help me with my Arabic.

I would point to things, and he would tell me their Arabic names. I was open, even friendly. That turned out to be a big mistake.

You can't be that way with men in such a conservative culture. They often take it the wrong way. He began to get demanding, even assertive. At one point, the pin on my hijab came loose, and I started to pin it back up.

Abu Qarrar demanded, "No, open."

I looked down and whispered, "No."

He repeated, "Open!" He looked at me with wide eyes, very serious.

To Westerners this may sound like an innocuous exchange, but in the context of the conservative Middle East, this was a totally inappropriate advance. I needed to shut him down completely. I put my head down, held my hands in my lap, and didn't move a muscle.

Finally he left and closed the door and locked it. He returned every hour or so, and I wouldn't even look at him. I'd just sit there.

Abu Hassan I met later. He was older - about 32, I would guess - and married with children. Where Abu Qarrar was unathletic, Abu Hassan was trim and fit. He told me he'd been a gym teacher. For some reason I got the impression he'd been in Saddam Hussein's elite Republican Guard.

At first I found him to be the more sympathetic of the Muj Brothers. His age made him seem more mature, or at least more responsible. Later I saw that by guarding me, he was being confined as well. Desperate as he was for action, he would get cabin fever in minutes. Then he'd pace, reciting the fatiha, the opening chapter of the Koran.

The relationship of the Muj Brothers to each other was not one of equals. At times, Abu Hassan treated Abu Qarrar as if he were an insurgent's apprentice.

For instance, the older man taught the younger how to clear the chamber of his handgun and remove its clip. This was good for my safety, as Abu Qarrar would often point his handgun at me and pretend to shoot, for fun.

Abu Hassan used to go out at night sometimes to plant IEDs. Then in daylight he'd go out again, to detonate them. One day, when we were at the insurgent's "clubhouse," as I called it, he decided he would have to wait before leaving to set off his explosives. There were too many American soldiers in the vicinity, he said.

So Abu Qarrar decided he would act the part of the mujahideen hero. He grabbed a black-and-white checked kaffiyeh, the common Arabic head covering favored by insurgents, threw it over his shoulders in a dramatic swoop, and declared that he would set off to fight the Americans, no matter what.

Like a teacher facing a rebellious student, Abu Hassan grabbed Abu Qarrar by the shoulders and snatched away the kaffiyeh over Abu Qarrar's loud objections. The younger man wasn't going to be allowed to pick his own battles. And Abu Hassan recognized the kaffiyeh for what it was, a giant flashing sign to any US soldier that as much as said, "Shoot me! I'm a muj!"

(J.C.) As my time in captivity passed the two-month mark, my morale, already low, began to deteriorate sharply.

One of my biggest problems was that I had let myself have hope. Numerous times, the insurgent leader, the black-eyed Abu Nour, had said my release was only a matter of settling details. Inevitably, my mood would soar - and then the release wouldn't happen, due to some unspecified "problem." Then I'd feel worse than if I hadn't been told anything at all.

Then there were the videos. They had been astounded when my first hostage video, in which I had been forced to plead for the release of women at Abu Ghraib, had coincided with the freeing of five female prisoners by the US. After that, they seemed to be almost in a frenzy to see what else they could get in exchange for me.

They kept wanting to film different videos with different demands aimed at different audiences. Sometimes I was pleading with the American people in general for help. Once I asked the King of Jordan to free Sajida Mubarak Atrous al-Rishawi, a woman who tried to blow up a Jordanian hotel Nov. 9, 2005. Her explosive vest failed to detonate and she was caught. Another time I begged for aid from the leader of the United Arab Emirates. Later, I made one denouncing him.

While only four of my videos ever reached the outside world, I made nearly a dozen, including retakes done when I didn't cry enough to satisfy my mujahideen producers. And I dreaded making them, not so much because it's scary to plead for your life in front of a camera, but because I recognized that each one was a guarantee I would remain in captivity for some time longer.

Of course, there was an even worse alternative - that the death threats and deadlines they mentioned would be real.

• • •

(P.G.) After the fury over the Feb. 22 Samarra bombing and the backlash over Danish newspaper cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammad, it seemed wise to lower Jill's media profile until emotions calmed somewhat. From about mid-February no public service ads were broadcast.

On March 7, the two-month mark of Jill's abduction, the Monitor restarted the PSA campaign in Iraq. It distributed a video to Iraqi news outlets that included clips from an Al Sharqiya TV interview. The Baghdad-based network had interviewed an Iraqi family that Jill had written a story about in the spring of 2005. A toddler had been left paralyzed by a suicide bomber, and her family had been left homeless. Jill had profiled the family, and later brought money to them sent by readers.

The story illustrated her compassion for Iraqis. But it also highlighted how Jill's personal and professional history made it easy to generate public support for her in the region.

On March 10, the US State Department announced that they had found the body of American Quaker activist Tom Fox. He had been taken hostage on Nov. 26, 2005, along with three other members of the Christian Peacemakers Team. To those working on Jill's behalf, it was an emotional blow; a harsh reminder that hostages held long enough to become icons with their own TV news logos often get killed.

Would PSAs be enough to protect her?

(J.C.) Meanwhile, my relationship with my guards Abu Qarrar and Abu Hassan got worse as well. Frustration and boredom had slowly eroded their once permissive and friendly attitudes toward me.

Once they had pretended I was a guest. Now they made mean jokes and comments about me in Arabic, thinking I didn't understand. They capriciously restricted my tiny freedoms, such as access to sun, fresh air, and even interior space for pacing.

Their logic was twisted. They were mad at me because they had to guard me, and wanted to punish me for it.

They picked at me in petty ways. One day we were having tea, and I took my glass and stirred it counterclockwise, as I always do.

"No, that's wrong!" said Abu Qarrar, only half-joking. "Stir your tea clockwise!"

I was tired of that kind of behavior. When we later moved to Abu Ahmed's house west of Fallujah, I went over their heads, in essence, to gain more freedoms. I took advantage of the situation to escape the Muj Brothers and hang out with the woman of the house.

They couldn't follow me. The woman's husband was gone during the day, and it would have been unthinkably improper for unrelated men to be around her in any way.

So I had one of the best days I had in captivity. The woman and I chopped vegetables, cooked, washed dishes, swept the floor, made tea, and played games with her little girl. I sensed a flicker of sympathy when the woman complimented my potato peeling ability, and when she asked what people in America ate for breakfast, as we set out the morning meal.

If I pretended hard enough, I could almost fool myself into thinking I really was a guest, living with an average Iraqi family for a story about daily life.

	INSURGENT HOME: US officials say that this kitchen is in one of the homes where Carroll was held. US Marine Corps/AP

But I wasn't a guest. I was a prisoner. And my guards were determined to win our battle of wills.

A few days later we were back at the clubhouse, where there weren't any women, and they were little kings. After we arrived, they just locked me in my room.

All my hard-won privileges were gone. They let me out to eat, but wouldn't eat with me. In the Middle East, that's a major insult. They wouldn't speak, except for blunt orders.

After dinner, I was going back to my room when I turned and yelled, "This is injustice! This is thuloum!"

My strategy from the start had been to humanize myself. The only way to survive, I thought, was to get them to see me as a person, not a symbol or an object of hate. But by this point, I had put up with so much from so many people, I didn't care. All the questions:

"Why aren't you a Muslim?"

"Why don't you love Zarqawi?"

"Why don't you want to drive a car bomb?"

Plus the fact I'd been kidnapped and Alan murdered. It was all ridiculous.

They just locked me back in my room. And that night, as I lay there, I thought, "I can't do this. I'm not going to win this. It's stupid to try."

The next morning, I didn't knock on the door to come out. I waited for them to fetch me. When they did, I just kept my head down and walked to the bathroom. I was quiet and deferential - as I had been in my ordeal's early days.

I had to keep my eye on the larger goal, which was survival. I had to give in.

The Muj Brothers had won the battle with me. That didn't mean they had won a war. In the following days, Abu Hassan slept less and less. He'd pull out his handgun and play with it.

"The American soldiers, they will never leave Iraq," he said one day. "It will be 300 years before they go away."

It was the first time I had every heard any of the mujahideen express anything less than complete optimism about the future.

	TWIN SISTERS: Jill and Katie Carroll say that they didn't get along as children (top photo, at age 5). But after they graduated from high school (bottom) that began to change. Photos Courtesy of the Carroll Family

(P.G.) As March slipped away, to some involved in the long effort to free Jill, it was as if they were now coasting - like a car that was moving forward, but with the engine off.

So Team Jill did what they had agreed to do when things seemed too quiet. They'd kept one person in reserve, someone who might get lots of attention and elicit much emotion: Jill's twin sister, Katie. It was time to put her on TV.

The funny thing - the ironic thing - is that Katie and Jill were twins who didn't get along. Not when they were youngsters, anyway.

They fought and fought and fought all the way through high school. The points of contention between them were the usual sibling irritants, such as whose turn it was in the shower, and who'd been in whose room, and when, and for how long.

They were just different sorts of people, with different lives. Katie was a dancer and looked like a ballerina; Jill loved competitive swimming and had a muscular swimmer's build.

But their relationship changed when they went away to college (Tufts University for Katie; the University of Massachusetts for Jill). They spent hours on the phone with each other, and suddenly the person who had been so irritating when they lived in the same house seemed like an invaluable support.

After graduation, both ended up working in the same area: foreign affairs. Katie joined an international development firm, based in Washington. Jill pursued her dream of becoming a foreign correspondent.

Katie appeared on Al Arabiya on March 29. She talked about how Jill's kidnapping had affected her family and appealed for information that could lead to her release.

• • •

(J.C.) I got worse. I was losing it. I would curl up in the bed and cry so hard. But I couldn't be loud, so I would cry into the bed, into the plush blanket.

Through all the weeks and months I hadn't prayed. I thought it would be hypocritical. All of my extended family is Catholic, but I hadn't been to church in a long time. I hadn't grown up with much religion, in fact. But I needed to calm myself. I knew that my family and friends were doing all they could for me, but it just wasn't enough anymore. They were out there, and I was here alone. OK, I thought, I'll ask God for strength and patience.

"God, thank you for getting me through all these days so far," I began. "Please just give me the strength to keep going.

"Stay with my family right now and sit with them and give them strength.

"I know I never used to come to You before and it's bad of me to come to You now when I really need it.

"Please, just stay with me right now. Just stay with me right now and don't leave me."

Jill's two guards watch cartoons and the Koran channel. But tension grows as she becomes more desperate.

By Jill Carroll and Peter Grier | Staff writers of The Christian Science Monitor

(J.C.) Abu Qarrar was young, rotund, and seemed new to the mujahideen lifestyle. He hadn't memorized much of the Koran, unlike his more senior counterparts. He sometimes sneaked glances at the women on the music-video channels when he thought no one was looking.

To show off, he would run in place, then kick his right leg in the air and fling his arms forward in an awkward demonstration of kung fu.

Abu Hassan was older, athletic, and seething with devotion to jihad. He seemed a veteran fighter - although, like Abu Qarrar, he loved the "Cat and Mouse" cartoons. Yes, they watched "Tom and Jerry."

When he was bored - which was often - he'd use his cellphone to record himself giving fake fiery sermons standing at the top of the stairs as if on a mosque pulpit. Then he'd play them back, to hear how he'd sound if he were a famous imam.

These two men were my most constant guards. They reported to Abu Ahmed, one of Abu Nour's lieutenants. Abu Ahmed was an Islamic scholar who had just finished an Arabic translation of a Henry Kissinger biography and was reading 'How to Win Friends and Influence People" by Dale Carnegie.

The two guards weren't at every house where I was held, and others came and went even when they were present. But during my captivity I spent more time with them than anyone else. They were my up-close-and-personal examples of the rank and file of the Iraqi mujahideen.

Abu Qarrar and Abu Hassan were also starkly different people, despite the fact that they called each other "brother." In this, they were symbolic of the contrasts I saw in the larger group of mujahideen.

Some members were clever; others, not so much. Some seemed dangerous; most were devout. A few were sympathetic. A few were educated. At least one of the women appeared bitter about her lot in life.

As far as I knew, all were native Iraqis.

As the weeks of my captivity turned into months, Abu Qarrar and Abu Hassan became tense and unhappy. They were bored with guard duty and tired of inaction. They became more petty and controlling toward me.

Meanwhile, I was increasingly desperate, fearful, and angry. I felt I was beginning to lose my self-control.

The result was conflict between me and the Muj Brothers which, if not for the context, might have seemed adolescent. We couldn't let little slights go. We were like animals in a cage, locked in all together.

• • •

	GLOBAL SUPPORT: In Rome, a poster of Jill was hung from city hall on Feb. 5. Pier Paolo Cito/AP Photos: Efforts to free Jill

(P.G.) The Feb. 26 deadline tied to the third video came and went. The kidnappers didn't call. They didn't write. They issued no new demands. But public interest in Jill Carroll's plight didn't flag. The Monitor's Team Jill had adopted a strategy early on to take a low-key US media response. They followed the advice of experts who had analyzed The Wall Street Journal's efforts to free Daniel Pearl after he was kidnapped in Pakistan: ignore the Western media, focus on Iraqi media. The kidnappers and ordinary Iraqis who might generate tips won't be watching Larry King.

Still, Jill's abduction struck a remarkable global chord. There was a series of "Free Jill" rallies in Paris. A giant poster of her was hung from the city hall in Rome. Students at the University of Massachusetts (where Jill went to school) and at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor (where Jill grew up) held rallies and candlelight vigils. Thousands sent donations to a fund set up to support the family of Alan, Jill's Iraqi interpreter. A jazz song was composed in her honor. Paintings and poems were sent to the Monitor offices. And prayers were said at hundreds of churches, mosques, and synagogues around the United States.

A 45-year-old man from Fremont, Calif., was one of half a dozen Americans who offered to take Jill's place. "I would like to emphasize the fact that I am definitely not suicidal nor would I relish having my life cut short....

"I'm offering myself as a replacement for her as a hostage or even as a potential martyr for her outstanding work as a balanced and compassionate journalist," he wrote.

(J.C.) Abu Qarrar claimed to have been part of the team that abducted me, but if he was, I didn't see him. I do remember that he was the guard who sat outside the door of my bedroom on the first night I was held.

After all, he was hard to miss, with a girth that advertised his eating habits and a tattoo of Arabic writing on his inner left arm.

View our interactive map.

He told me he was 26. At the beginning of my ordeal he was unmarried. Later, he left for a period of time for an arranged wedding to a 13-year-old bride.

He didn't know what e-mail was. He'd never seen a computer. He marveled at how a can opener worked. There were times when we got along well. But overall I thought he acted like a spoiled little boy who enjoyed his authority over another human being - namely, me.

I learned this early on. During the first full day of my captivity, he kept peeking in the door, presumably to make sure I wasn't trying to escape. I'd heard that it was best for hostages to try to make captors see them as human beings, to elicit sympathy, so I tried talking to him. I asked him to help me with my Arabic.

I would point to things, and he would tell me their Arabic names. I was open, even friendly. That turned out to be a big mistake.

You can't be that way with men in such a conservative culture. They often take it the wrong way. He began to get demanding, even assertive. At one point, the pin on my hijab came loose, and I started to pin it back up.

Abu Qarrar demanded, "No, open."

I looked down and whispered, "No."

He repeated, "Open!" He looked at me with wide eyes, very serious.

To Westerners this may sound like an innocuous exchange, but in the context of the conservative Middle East, this was a totally inappropriate advance. I needed to shut him down completely. I put my head down, held my hands in my lap, and didn't move a muscle.

Finally he left and closed the door and locked it. He returned every hour or so, and I wouldn't even look at him. I'd just sit there.

Abu Hassan I met later. He was older - about 32, I would guess - and married with children. Where Abu Qarrar was unathletic, Abu Hassan was trim and fit. He told me he'd been a gym teacher. For some reason I got the impression he'd been in Saddam Hussein's elite Republican Guard.

At first I found him to be the more sympathetic of the Muj Brothers. His age made him seem more mature, or at least more responsible. Later I saw that by guarding me, he was being confined as well. Desperate as he was for action, he would get cabin fever in minutes. Then he'd pace, reciting the fatiha, the opening chapter of the Koran.

The relationship of the Muj Brothers to each other was not one of equals. At times, Abu Hassan treated Abu Qarrar as if he were an insurgent's apprentice.

For instance, the older man taught the younger how to clear the chamber of his handgun and remove its clip. This was good for my safety, as Abu Qarrar would often point his handgun at me and pretend to shoot, for fun.

Abu Hassan used to go out at night sometimes to plant IEDs. Then in daylight he'd go out again, to detonate them. One day, when we were at the insurgent's "clubhouse," as I called it, he decided he would have to wait before leaving to set off his explosives. There were too many American soldiers in the vicinity, he said.

So Abu Qarrar decided he would act the part of the mujahideen hero. He grabbed a black-and-white checked kaffiyeh, the common Arabic head covering favored by insurgents, threw it over his shoulders in a dramatic swoop, and declared that he would set off to fight the Americans, no matter what.

Like a teacher facing a rebellious student, Abu Hassan grabbed Abu Qarrar by the shoulders and snatched away the kaffiyeh over Abu Qarrar's loud objections. The younger man wasn't going to be allowed to pick his own battles. And Abu Hassan recognized the kaffiyeh for what it was, a giant flashing sign to any US soldier that as much as said, "Shoot me! I'm a muj!"

(J.C.) As my time in captivity passed the two-month mark, my morale, already low, began to deteriorate sharply.

One of my biggest problems was that I had let myself have hope. Numerous times, the insurgent leader, the black-eyed Abu Nour, had said my release was only a matter of settling details. Inevitably, my mood would soar - and then the release wouldn't happen, due to some unspecified "problem." Then I'd feel worse than if I hadn't been told anything at all.

Then there were the videos. They had been astounded when my first hostage video, in which I had been forced to plead for the release of women at Abu Ghraib, had coincided with the freeing of five female prisoners by the US. After that, they seemed to be almost in a frenzy to see what else they could get in exchange for me.

They kept wanting to film different videos with different demands aimed at different audiences. Sometimes I was pleading with the American people in general for help. Once I asked the King of Jordan to free Sajida Mubarak Atrous al-Rishawi, a woman who tried to blow up a Jordanian hotel Nov. 9, 2005. Her explosive vest failed to detonate and she was caught. Another time I begged for aid from the leader of the United Arab Emirates. Later, I made one denouncing him.

While only four of my videos ever reached the outside world, I made nearly a dozen, including retakes done when I didn't cry enough to satisfy my mujahideen producers. And I dreaded making them, not so much because it's scary to plead for your life in front of a camera, but because I recognized that each one was a guarantee I would remain in captivity for some time longer.

Of course, there was an even worse alternative - that the death threats and deadlines they mentioned would be real.

• • •

(P.G.) After the fury over the Feb. 22 Samarra bombing and the backlash over Danish newspaper cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammad, it seemed wise to lower Jill's media profile until emotions calmed somewhat. From about mid-February no public service ads were broadcast.

On March 7, the two-month mark of Jill's abduction, the Monitor restarted the PSA campaign in Iraq. It distributed a video to Iraqi news outlets that included clips from an Al Sharqiya TV interview. The Baghdad-based network had interviewed an Iraqi family that Jill had written a story about in the spring of 2005. A toddler had been left paralyzed by a suicide bomber, and her family had been left homeless. Jill had profiled the family, and later brought money to them sent by readers.

The story illustrated her compassion for Iraqis. But it also highlighted how Jill's personal and professional history made it easy to generate public support for her in the region.

On March 10, the US State Department announced that they had found the body of American Quaker activist Tom Fox. He had been taken hostage on Nov. 26, 2005, along with three other members of the Christian Peacemakers Team. To those working on Jill's behalf, it was an emotional blow; a harsh reminder that hostages held long enough to become icons with their own TV news logos often get killed.

Would PSAs be enough to protect her?

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