Ex-Hostage Carroll Home With Family
Journalist Held Hostage For 82 Days In Iraq Arrives In Boston
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Play CBS Video Video Carroll Reunites With Family Journalist Jill Carroll finally returned home to Boston to see her family after being held captive by insurgents. But as Randall Pinkston reports, some are still puzzled about her anti-war statements.
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Video Colleagues Defend Jill Carroll Friends of Jill Carroll defended the reporter following the release of a video where she speaks against the Iraq war. But as Randall Pinkston reports, friends say her captors made her say those words.
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Video 'Let The Healing Begin' CBS News RAW: Richard Bergenheim, editor of the Christian Science Monitor, reads part of a statement written by freed hostage Jill Carroll and talks about her return home.
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In this Christian Science Monitor photo, former hostage Jill Carroll, left, is hugged by her mother Mary Beth Carroll as her twin sister Katie pats her head and her father Jim smiles in Boston, Sunday, April 2, 2006. (CSM, Melanie Stetson Freeman)
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The family of former hostage Jill Carroll talks to her by cell phone while en route to meet them in Boston, Sunday, April 2, 2006. In the Christian Science Monitor’s offices are her mother Mary Beth, her father Jim and, holding the phone, her twin sister Katie. (CSM/Melanie Stetson Freeman)
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28-year-old U.S. journalist Jill Carroll walks away after she landed at the U.S. Airbase in Ramstein, southwestern Germany, Saturday, April 1, 2006. (AP)
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Photo Essay Kidnapped Journalist American Jill Carroll is set free after being held in Iraq for almost three months.
"I finally feel like I am alive again. I feel so good," Carroll said. "To be able to step outside anytime, to feel the sun directly on your face — to see the whole sky. These are luxuries that we just don't appreciate every day."
The 28-year-old Christian Science Monitor reporter arrived at Boston's Logan International Airport just after noon, and was quickly driven away in a police-escorted limousine to the newspaper's headquarters.
She didn't step out into public view, but reports on the Monitor's Web site, along with photos, showed a joyful and tearful reunion with her parents and twin sister.
Carroll has said her kidnappers confined her to a small, soundproof room with frosted windows before she was released Thursday after nearly three months in captivity.
She was seized Jan. 7 in one of Baghdad's most dangerous neighborhoods, near where a Sunni Arab official had agreed to meet her for an interview that never took place. The gunmen who abducted her killed her Iraqi translator.
She was accompanied on the flight by Monitor colleagues, who described her seven-hour flight back to the U.S.
Carroll was touched to find a red rose on her dinner tray, the Monitor reported. Later, a flight attendant dropped off a copy of Friday's USA Today in which she saw her own face framed by a black head scarf. It was a photo of the giant poster that had been erected in Rome.
She was tickled to see pictures of her family and kissed the photo of her father, Jim Carroll. "He looks good," she said, and ran her fingers over the photo of her mom, Mary Beth, the Monitor reported.
Editor Richard Bergenheim said colleagues were grateful Carroll was home safe.
"When Jill is ready, the Monitor will begin to tell her story and we will also hold a press conference where she will speak. But we will not be making any further statements on Sunday and hope that the Carroll family's privacy will be respected," Bergenheim said in a statement.
©MMVI, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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