Hostage video ignites wide call to free Carroll

The Al Zamman newspaper in Iraq is condemning the kidnapping in Thursday's edition, as did some other Middle East papers.

Also condemning the kidnapping and threats against Jill was Muthana Harith al-Dari, a leader of Iraq's Muslim Scholars Association, an umbrella group for a number of leading Sunni clerics, or Ulama.

Mr. Dari said kidnapping is always wrong and called for Jill's immediate release.

"All kidnappings and assassinations are completely rejected... especially when kidnapping a journalist. Journalists are here to tell the world about the occupation so kidnapping a journalist is going to hide the truth," Dari, who acts as the association's spokesman, told Al Sharqiya television in Iraq.

In the United States, her family appealed for mercy. Her father, Jim Carroll, issued a statement in which he called his daughter "an innocent journalist."

Jill Carroll moved to the Middle East to bear witness to an extraordinary time in the region's history.

She has learned the language, cultivated friends, and immersed herself in the culture to a degree perhaps unusual in the transient world of foreign correspondents.

Friends and former colleagues say she has been doing a great service to Iraqis and the world at large by trying to convey complicated reality - and that her kidnapping thus does not really serve any group's interest.

"She's extremely interested in getting the facts about the Arab world. She did a tremendous job in her reporting portraying a true picture of what was going on in Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East," says Ayman Safadi, Ms. Carroll's former editor at the Jordan Times, and currently editor of Al Ghad newspaper in Amman.

Rana Husseini, a Jordan Times reporter and friend of Carroll's, says that she was shocked by the kidnapping, and hopes Carroll will return safely. Carroll used to come to her house for meals, and came and sat with her in the hospital when she was ill, says Ms. Husseini.

"What these people did does not serve the Iraqi cause," says Husseini.

Muthana Harith al-Dari, a leader of Iraq's Muslim Scholars Association, an umbrella group for a number of leading Sunni clerics, condemned the Jan. 7 kidnapping of freelance journalist Jill Carroll Wednesday.

"All kidnappings and assassinations are completely rejected," he said, "... especially when kidnapping a journalist. Journalists are here to tell the world about the occupation, so kidnapping a journalist is going to hide the truth,'' Mr. Dari, who acts as the association's spokesman, told Al Sharqiya television in Iraq.

"This journalist, Jill Carroll ... is one of the great journalists who are against the occupation. She is considered one of the best journalists who stood against the American occupation of Iraq and she focused in her articles on ... telling the world about the Iraqi people's suffering."

• Staff writer Dan Murphy contributed from Baghdad.

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