The truth is I was threatened and mistreated, says Jill Carroll
Baghdad (AsiaNews/Agencies) Jill Carroll now says that statements she made at the time of her liberation about being well-treated and not being threatened are not true. In reality, she was scared and did feel threatened. Perhaps those reactions have something to do with the overwhelming sense of helplessness and the knowledge that your future depends on those who abducted you, says Phil Sands, a British freelance who is amongst the lucky few who survived to tell their story.
Abductions are commonplace in Iraq but only those involving foreigners, especially Westerners, become front-page news. Most victims are Iraqis who are usually kidnapped for ransom, but money is not always the main reason. Kidnapping Iraqi Christians is a way of persecuting the community as a young man working at Mosul's Holy Spirit Church told AsiaNews. "In our parish, many Christians have been abducted and we have been forced to pay enormous ransoms. Many have chosen to leave", he said.
Phil Sands, kidnapped on December 26, 2005, and freed by US troops five days later, always felt he might end up in a gruesome hostage video. "I would see myself appearing in the next," he said, "a successor to that other British hostage Kenneth Bigley," who was beheaded."
Jill Carroll's statements stem from a similar environment. Kidnapped on January 7 by a commando that killed her interpreter, she was freed March 30 after 82 days in captivity during which her captors threatened to kill her several times if jailed Iraqi women were not released.
"I was treated very well," she told a Baghdad TV station after her release, expressing her one wish to be reunited with her family and asking President Bush to pull out of Iraq.
"Tens of thousands of Iraqis have lost their lives here because of the occupation," she noted. The insurgents "are only trying to defend their country [. . .], to stop an illegal and dangerous and deadly occupation". And she said she would not cooperate with the military authorities of her country.
Back in the US though, the journalist told a different story. "My captors forced me to participate in a propaganda video. They told me they would let me go if I cooperated. I was living in a threatening environment, under their control, and wanted to go home alive. I agreed," the 28-year-old woman said. "Fearing retribution from my captors, I did not speak freely. Out of fear I said I wasn't threatened. In fact, I was threatened many times." And "[l]et me be clear: I abhor all who kidnap and murder civilians, and my captors are clearly guilty of both crimes".
Ms Carroll also indicated that she felt unable to speak freely during an interview taped immediately after her release at the headquarters of the Iraqi Islamic Party in which she said it was important for people to know that she had been well-treated by her kidnappers.
"The party had promised me the interview would never be aired on television, and broke their word," she stressed.
Similarly, for Phil Sands, the "instincts to survive were strong, and so began a bizarre process of making an ally of my captors, an attempt to snatch back some control from those who had stolen it from me. In more rational moments, I would have recognised this as Stockholm syndrome; at the time it was nothing more than blind instinct".
He was interrogated by a man who spoke "in good English" in a small, dark room with two armed men. "It felt like a test, with my lifeif not already lostdepending on each answer," he said.
The man "asked if I thought I was being held by terrorists, what I thought they were fighting for, my opinion of Islam. He sought my views on why Tony Blair had won so many elections, on Saddam Hussein, on Osama bin Laden. After freeing me, the Americans told me they found an orange jumpsuit and sword in the room next to mine."
Abductions may vary; criminal intent and terrorism might come together; but for the victims it makes no difference.
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29/03/2017 15:48
13/12/2023 16:03
