Chorus Of Pleas For Reporter's Release

Muslim Leaders And Her Mother Make Appeals For Jill Carroll's Release

(CBS/AP) 
Carroll grew up in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and received a journalism undergraduate degree in 1999 from the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. She worked as a reporting assistant for The Wall Street Journal before moving to Jordan and launching her freelance career in 2002, learning Arabic on the way.

CBS News correspondent Elizabeth Palmer reports across the Muslim world, calls for Carroll's release are growing (video).

"Nothing, no cause justifies the kidnapping of an innocent person whose job is to report the facts and tell the world about what is happening in Iraq," Ayman Safdi, former editor of the Jordan Times newspaper which gave Carroll her first job in the region, told CBS News. "What Iraq needs is more people like Jill."

Her newspaper's Washington bureau chief, David Cook, also urged the captors to contact them to discuss her release. Cook would not say specifically if the newspaper would pay ransom.

"I think our policy would be that we would welcome contact from the captors," Cook told NBC. "Either the family or the Monitor would be eager to talk to the captors."

Calls for Carroll's freedom were also made by Muslim leaders in Iraq plus a team of U.S.-based Islamic advocates traveling to the Middle East to seek her release.

The Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations flew to the Jordanian capital, Amman, on Thursday and was planning to hold a news conference Friday in Baghdad. The group said it hopes to reach Arab television audiences and persuade Carroll's captors to release her.

The Bloomfield Hills-based Islamic Shura Council of Michigan, which represents about 20 Muslim groups in the state, told the Detroit Free Press that Carroll's kidnapping would not help the Iraqi cause.

In Iraq, leaders of three prominent Sunni Muslim groups demanded Carroll's release. Iraq's insurgency draws the bulk of its support from Iraq's once dominant Sunni Arab community, which fell from grace once its Sunni benefactor, Saddam, was toppled.

"We condemn the abduction of journalists who are a means to convey the truth to the people," said Muthana Harith al-Dhari, spokesman for the Association of Muslim Scholars, which is believed to have ties to some Sunni insurgent groups.

However, al-Dhari, who is considered a hard-liner in the association, said there was little that his group could do because it did not know who was holding her. French journalist and former hostage Florence Aubenas, who was released in June after being held hostage in Iraq for 157 days, also called on Carroll's hostage-takers to release her.

"She came to this country to do her job as a journalist and not anything else," Aubenas told Al-Jazeera.

Carroll's mother said her daughter even discussed with her family the possibility of being kidnapped in Iraq, a country where more than 240 foreigners have been kidnapped and at least 39 killed since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein.

"Those things have been said. And she knows that we love her and support her," Mary Beth Carroll said. "She knows that we can be strong for her."

Roy Hallums, an American contractor who was held hostage last year in Iraq for 10 months said he would tell Carroll's family not to give up (video).

"There is a chance," he told CBS News correspondent Lara Logan. "I'm here. I'm proof that sometimes it happens."