Baghdad - American journalist Jill Carroll, abducted in early January by gunmen in Baghdad, was released to a Sunni Arab political party in the capital Thursday morning after 82 days in captivity.

Carroll, 28, a freelance reporter working for the Christian Science Monitor, was said to be unharmed. She arrived safely at the party headquarters just after 1 p.m.
David Cook, the Monitor's Washington bureau chief, said he was in touch early this morning with Carroll's father, who had talked with Carroll after her release.

"Unknown people," released Carroll to the Iraqi Islamic Party's branch office in Amariyah in the western part of the city, Tariq al-Hashimi, the party's secretary general, said in a telephone conversation at 12:30 p.m. local time.

The party then transported her by armed convoy to its headquarters in the Yarmouk district. "She is OK. She is safe. She is more or less scared," Hashimi said. "I told her calm down and we would take care of her."

Carroll was kidnapped Jan. 7, after arriving for an interview with Sunni politician Adnan Dulaimi in the western Baghdad neighborhood of Adil. When she left his office after Dulaimi did not show up, her car was attacked by gunmen who took her hostage. Her translator, Allan Anwiya, 29, was killed in the ambush, while her driver escaped.

Full story: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/30/AR2006033000225.html