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March 31, 2006

Jill Carroll: The Mujahedeen Interview video; Most-linked blogs of 2000

Jill Carroll: The Mujahedeen Interview: Video.

(Transcript by ABC News : Insurgents Justify Release of Jill Carroll in Web Tape):

ABC News has found a video on an insurgent Web site showing U.S. reporter Jill Carroll before she was released by her captors in Iraq. The circumstances surrounding the video are unclear and it is equally unclear whether Carroll was under duress during the taping.

The tape appears to have been made earlier today, before Carroll's captors released her, but the time of the taping has not yet been confirmed by ABC News.

Carroll, 28, had been held for three months by an Islamic jihadist group that refers to itself as the Revenge Brigade. The group had demanded that the United States release all Iraqi women from its prisons in exchange for Carroll's release.

In the video uncovered by ABC News, Carroll is shown being interviewed by an unknown person and refers to her imminent release.

Below is a partial translation of the video...

Excerpt:

Voice: Why didn't they (the American Army or CIA) save you?

Carroll: Well, I think the Mujahedeen are very smart and even with all the technology and all the people the American Army has here, they still are better at knowing how to live and work here and more clever, despite all the technology of the American Army, still more clever and better at being here than the American Army, still better at what they do.

It reads like she did what she had to do to get out of there alive. (What would you have done?)

News.com Australia completes the translation:

At the end of the tape, her interrogator read out a statement in Arabic.

"The mujahideen in the land of the two rivers announce the liberation of the journalist Jill Carroll ... after the US forces and the CIA failed to find her making their ineptitude obvious to the whole world," he said.

"We liberate this journalist today after the American government met some of our demands by releasing some of our women prisoners."

WaPo: 'Like Falling Off a Cliff For 3 Months.' Reporter Ellen Knickmeyer in Baghdad talked to Carroll. It begins,

Jill Carroll wondered from day to day whether she would grow old or die a hostage.

"It was like falling off a cliff for three months, waiting to hit the ground," the 28-year-old American reporter said Thursday after being released by her kidnappers.

The Post has also posted video of a Baghdad TV interview with Carroll just after her release, on this story page: Journalist Jill Carroll Freed By Her Captors in Baghdad.

Updated 11:16 a.m.

Report: Carroll Threatened Before Release. AP:

(Christian Science Monitor editor Richard Bergenheim) said Friday that Carroll's parents, who spoke to her about the video, told him it was "conducted under duress."

"What emerged was that they actually started filming this tape the night before and then there was a power outage. Jill had been told the questions, asked to translate them from Arabic into English," he told ABC's "Good Morning America."

"When you're making a video and having to recite certain things with three men with machine guns standing over you, you're probably going to say exactly what you're told to say," Bergenheim added.

Early days: The most-linked blogs of September 2000. Beebo was countring by handback then. Robot Wisdom was #1, with 44 links. Interesting:

* There are no political blogs on the list—they hadn’t been invented yet. Actually, I got the impression that many bloggers got a bit shirty when political blogs started up, and started getting popular—politics (and especially right-wing politics) wasn’t what the blog-powered future was supposed to be about. Blogs were supposed to be personal, thoughtful, witty, sincere, not brash and combative.

If you haven’t already seen it, Rebecca Mead’s New Yorker piece, “You’ve Got Blog,” captures the spirit of the blogs of the time, via the story of Kottke and Megnut’s blog-initiated relationship. (You can tell it’s old because it talks about “E-mail” and ICQ…)

Kottke was #2, Megnut #11.

Posted by Sheila Lennon  at 8:07 AM | Permalink