Carroll: 'I Was Threatened Many Times'
In her first public statements since leaving Iraq, former hostage Jill Carroll says she was coerced into making a "propaganda" videotape for her captors and lied in a television interview that aired on Iraqi television.
Shortly after her release, Carroll appeared on Iraqi television in an interview she says was taped by the Iraqi Islamic Party. She had said she was not harmed or threatened, but on Saturday, she said that was a lie.
"Out of fear I said I wasn't threatened," she said in a statement posted on the Christian Science Monitor web site. "In fact, I was threatened many times."
The statement continued, "I was, and remain, deeply angry with the people who did this."
The American reporter also said the comments she made on a different video made by her captors do not represent her personal views. On that tape she speaks out against the American presence in Iraq and calls on the president to bring the troops home.
"They told me they would let me go if I cooperated," the statement reads. "I was living in a threatening environment, under their control, and wanted to go home alive. I agreed."
Carroll arrived earlier Saturday at a U.S. military base in Germany, the first stop on her return to the United States from Iraq where the journalist was kidnapped and spent 82 days in captivity.
Gone was the Islamic headscarf she had worn as a hostage and she had traded her full-length robe for jeans, a bulky gray sweater, and a desert camouflage jacket.
"I'm happy to be here," she told Col. Kurt Lohide, the U.S. officer who welcomed her to Ramstein Air Base.
Richard Walsh, a spokesman for the Massachusetts Port Authority, said a flight carrying Carroll was expected to land at Logan International Airport in Boston late Sunday morning.
In other developments:
Carroll, a 28-year-old freelancer for the Boston-based Christian Science Monitor, was seized Jan. 7 in western Baghdad by gunmen who killed her Iraqi translator.
She was dropped off Thursday at an office of the Iraqi Islamic Party, a Sunni Arab organization, and later escorted by the U.S. military to the Green Zone, the fortified compound in Baghdad protecting the U.S. embassy and other facilities.
After a day in seclusion she left Balad Air Base near Baghdad Saturday on a military transport plane, landing at Ramstein shortly before 2 a.m. EST. Carroll was seated in the cockpit of the plane, a C17 Globemaster that was also carrying several soldiers wounded in Iraq.
As the plane came to stop, she cast a bemused look at the bevy of television cameras waiting on the tarmac. But she was all smiles when she emerged from the aircraft a few minutes later, wearing jeans and sneakers and carrying a flight bag. Her hair, uncovered was pulled back in a ponytail.
As journalists watched from a distance, Lohide escorted her to a waiting van.
Carroll attracted a huge amount of sympathy during her ordeal and a wide variety of groups in the Middle East, including the Islamic militant group Hamas, appealed for her release.
She spoke to Iraqi television upon her release but otherwise had not shown herself in public prior to her brief appearance Saturday.
Jill Carroll looked remarkably composed in the Iraqi television interview, in which she now says she was lying, but CBS News chief foreign correspondent Lara Logan reports that what was not filmed was the weeping young woman who walked through the door of the Iraqi Islamic Party office shortly before.
Tariq al-Hashemi told CBS News about the emotional moment when Carroll suddenly appeared — and the hour it took to calm her down — before the television cameras were turned on.
Carroll agreed to be debriefed by U.S. officials, Logan reports, and her closest friend and colleague in Baghdad, Scott Peterson, told CBS News that she was at the embassy, talking to everyone who wants to meet with her.
In her Saturday statement, Carroll rejected claims that she had not been cooperating with the military.
"At least two false statements about me have been widely aired: That I refused to travel and cooperate with the US military and that I refused to discuss my captivity with US officials," the statement said.
Ramstein officials said she was taken to guest quarters on the base. She was expected to leave for Boston on a flight out of Frankfurt, but Ramstein referred all questions to the Christian Science Monitor, which declined comment.
After the van left, the wounded soldiers were brought out of the rear of the plane on stretchers for transport to the U.S. military's Landstuhl Regional Medical Center.
The U.S. Embassy in Baghdad says more than 40 foreigners are still being held hostage in Iraq.