The Jill Carroll Story: Part 1

An Interview Turns Deadly; Captors Decide To Make A Video

(Christian Science Monitor)  In Boston before the sun rose, the Monitor assembled an ad hoc Team Jill — Marshall Ingwerson, the managing editor; David Scott, the foreign editor; and Amelia Newcomb, the deputy foreign editor. Richard Bergenheim was in Mexico taking his first vacation since becoming the paper's editor. He caught the next flight back.

For the next 82 days, they met every few hours, sometimes starting at 5:30 a.m. and often finishing the day at 10 or 11 p.m. with a conference call with Baghdad. Some of these editors had dealt before with the stress and emotion over the kidnapping — and even murder — of foreign correspondents filing for the paper. But none were truly prepared for what lay ahead.

Jill herself, isolated by Islamist insurgents, did not envision such rallies to her cause. In the weeks to come she sometimes would avoid thinking about her family, because it made her sad; when she did, she imagined them apprehensive, waiting for some sort of word from the U.S. government. As for the Monitor, well, she was just a freelancer, and it wasn't a rich paper. She figured that following her kidnapping and the murder of her interpreter, its rotating Baghdad staff would have fled Iraq.

She was wrong.

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(J.C.) In the first minutes after my abduction, my captors peppered me with questions in Arabic. I played dumb, fearful they would think I understood too much and kill me.

They quickly drove Adnan's Toyota onto the highways of western Baghdad and surrounding farmlands, going in circles, apparently to kill time. Their "success" was granted by God, they believed, and they issued thanks repeatedly. "Allah Akbar" they said, "God is greatest."

"They're going to take me out into a field and kill me," I thought as we bumped down rural back roads.

They seemed to read my thoughts, perplexed that I was afraid amidst their jubilation.

"Why you worried?" they asked in stilted English. "No, no, no, [this is] jihad! [We are] Iraqi, Iraqi mujahideen! Why you worried?"

Sunni Muslim insurgents were — still are — the most active hostage-takers in Iraq. Many were allied to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian who led Al Qaeda in Iraq until he was killed by a U.S. airstrike June 7.

But the outside world didn't know much about these groups. These weren't people who held press conferences or articulated their grievances through the political process.

They were a powerful force in Iraq, but they were like shadows behind a curtain. We could see broad outlines, but were left to guess at who they really were, how they think, and what motivates them.

Alan and I had been focusing for several months on piecing together a clear picture of Iraq's Sunni community. Their tacit support for the insurgency allowed it to operate; understanding them was key to understanding the forces violently splitting the country.

Now I was to gain the insight we had so long sought. At such a price to Alan, I have never been so desperate for ignorance.

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(P.G.) On the morning of Jan. 7, the phone rang in Monitor staff writer Scott Peterson's Istanbul home just as he was stepping out the door, headed to the airport. His wife, Alex, picked up, and gave the caller Scott's cellphone number. If he stopped now, he might miss his flight to eastern Turkey, where he was traveling to report a story on bird flu. Better to talk in the taxi, on the way.

Lean and intense, Peterson is a veteran foreign correspondent, the sort of person who wears a scarf as a memento of an attack by a poisonous snake in Africa. He's such a dedicated rock climber that he's built a climbing wall within the Monitor's small Baghdad apartment, where he spends four to six weeks at a time on assignment, to help himself stay physically and mentally sharp.

Five minutes down the road, the call came through. It was a British security firm that advises many journalists in Iraq. After a brief conversation, Peterson asked his driver to turn around. He called the foreign editor to inform him of his new destination — Iraq.
Sometime that day, Peterson, a habitual notetaker, wrote "Jill Abducted in Baghdad" in one of the small blue books he uses to document his life.

Underneath that line, in smaller letters, he wrote one word: "prayers."

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(J.C.) The room was small, with furniture that was fancy by Iraqi standards — two couches and an overstuffed chair covered in dark velvet with gold trim. The TV and its satellite box were in the corner.

Abu Rasha — a big man whom I would come to see as an organizer of my guards — lay down on one of the sofas. His wife and one of his children sat next to him on a chair.