Freed Hostage Carroll Back In The U.S.

Freed hostage Jill Carroll arrived in Boston Sunday afternoon, touching U.S. soil for the first time since being kidnapped in Iraq.

Carroll, a 28-year-old journalist for the Christian Science Monitor, was seized Jan. 7 in western Baghdad by gunmen who killed her Iraqi translator. Carroll spent 82 days in captivity before being released Thursday.

She was accompanied on the Lufthansa flight by a colleague from her employer, the Boston-based Christian Science Monitor, according to reporters on the plane.

Carroll declined comment during the flight. It was unclear whether she would speak with reporters after landing. She left the airport in a black limousine, which was escorted off airport property by State Police. Their destination was unknown.

On Saturday, Carroll strongly disavowed statements she had made during captivity in Iraq and shortly after her release, saying she had been repeatedly threatened. Carroll arrived at the Ramstein Air Base in southwestern Germany on Saturday from Balad Air Base in Baghdad.

In her first public statements since leaving Iraq, former hostage Jill Carroll said 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."

Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona, who was held prisoner for more than five years during the Vietnam War, on Sunday said Carroll found herself in "a terrible, terrible position" and said Americans should view her taped statements critical of the U.S. military presence in Iraq in that context.

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."

Gone was the Islamic headscarf Carroll 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.

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.

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.