US authorities were still guarding freed hostage Jill Carroll in Iraq on Friday, after insurgents released her from nearly three months of captivity and posted a video on the Internet showing her praising them.
‘I think the mujahideen are very smart and even with all the technology and all the people that the American army has here, they still are better at knowing how to live and work here, more clever,’ Carroll said in answer to a question posed by one of her kidnappers.
Asked what she meant, Carroll, who was snatched from a Baghdad street on January 7, answered: ‘It makes very clear that the mujahideen are the ones that will win in the end.’
The interviewer then asked Carroll if she had a message for US President George W Bush.
She smiled, before saying: ‘He needs to stop this war. He knows this war is wrong. He needs to finally admit that to the American people and make the troops go home.’
Carroll then said she felt guilty being set free while many women remained imprisoned at Baghdad’s US-run Abu Ghraib prison.
‘It shows the difference between the mujahedeen and the Americans, it shows the mujahedeen are good people fighting an honourable fight while the Americans are here as an occupying force treating the people in a very bad way,’ she said.
On Thursday afternoon, Carroll, who worked mainly for the Boston-based Christian Science Monitor, was dropped off near the office of the Iraqi Islamic Party.
US Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad told reporters that ‘no US person had made arrangements with kidnappers’ for her release. He added that none of the kidnappers was in custody yet.
