The father of a U.S. journalist kidnapped in Iraq told her captors in a statement televised Monday that she was not their enemy and would tell their story.
In a direct appeal broadcast on CNN 16 days after 28-year-old Jill Carroll was abducted off a Baghdad street, Jim Carroll urged her kidnappers to release her alive.
“I hope that you heard the conviction in Jill’s voice when she spoke of your country. That was real,” he said. “She is not your enemy. When you release her alive, she will tell your story with that same conviction.”
Carroll, a freelance journalist working for The Christian Science Monitor, was abducted on Jan. 7 by kidnappers who also killed her Iraqi interpreter. Her family has made several direct appeals to her captors via televised statements.
Carroll’s abductors threatened to kill her if all women prisoners in Iraq were not freed, but their deadline of Friday has passed with no word on her fate.
She was the 36th reporter to be kidnapped in Iraq since April 2004, according to the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists. Six of them have been killed.
