Alumna and Journalist Jill Carroll Still Held Hostage; Abductors Demand Release of Prisoners

Jan. 25, 2006

Contact:

Ed Blaguszewski 413/545-0444

AMHERST, Mass. – Iraqi and U.S. authorities are continuing to try to secure the release of freelance journalist Jill Carroll, 28, a University of Massachusetts Amherst graduate, who was abducted Jan. 7 while on assignment in Baghdad for The Christian Science Monitor.

Ten days after her disappearance, Al Jazeera television aired a 20-second silent video clip of Carroll along with a message from her kidnappers threatening to kill her unless the U.S. releases all female prisoners in Iraq within 72 hours.

The Monitor and Carroll’s family have appealed for her release, with similar calls coming from Iraq’s Muslim Scholars Association and The Jordan Times, where Carroll worked for a year.

Originally from Ann Arbor, Mich., Carroll received her B.A. in journalism in 1999. As an undergraduate, she wrote for the Massachusetts Daily Collegian, the campus’ student newspaper, and competed on the swimming and water polo teams. After graduating, she was hired as a reporting assistant at The Wall Street Journal, where she worked until 2002, when she moved to Jordan in anticipation of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Immersing herself in Middle East culture and learning Arabic, she pursued her goal of being a foreign correspondent. After a year with The Jordan Times, she opted for a freelance career. She has also written for U.S. News & World Report, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe and an Italian news agency.

“Jill told me on the first day of her first class with me that she wanted to be a foreign correspondent,” says Karen List, director of the journalism program at UMass. “She couldn’t wait to graduate so she could begin doing the important work of a reporter—giving voice to the voiceless and holding the powerful accountable.”

According to List, “Jill has a passion for covering the difficult story, and there is no story more difficult now than Iraq. She wasn’t ‘covering’ the story from her hotel and armored cars, as so many reporters do. She was covering it in the spirit of a true reporter from the streets.”

Carroll described her passion for her work last year in an article published by the American Journalism Review. “All I ever wanted to be was a foreign correspondent,” she wrote.

It was that ambition that took her to an interview with a Sunni leader in one of Baghdad’s most dangerous neighborhoods. After the man didn’t show up, Carroll’s car was ambushed by gunmen who killed her translator and carried her off.

List, who was in touch with her former student before the holidays, says they discussed having Carroll return to campus to speak to journalism students. Those plans have been replaced by uncertainty and anxiety about the reporter’s situation.

In the meantime, says List, “All of us are thinking of Jill and her family at this most trying time and hoping for her safe return to us.”

UMass Amherst Chancellor John V. Lombardi observes, "We can only hope and pray that Jill Carroll suffers no harm. Quality reporters are a key asset for everyone who seeks to understand the current circumstances in Iraq, and we regret the motives that prompt any attack on those who would keep us informed. Even as we worry about our own, we also worry about others placed in harm's way by the current circumstances."

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