HER STORY:

82 days in captivity: The Jill Carroll Story (CS Monitor, 8/13/06)

Jill Carroll, a freelance reporter for The Christian Science Monitor, was kidnapped by Iraqi insurgents on Jan. 7, 2006.

During 82 days, she was moved more than a dozen times, and had closer contact with Sunni mujahideen than any Westerner who has lived to tell the tale.

She cooked with the women. She played with the children. But she feared for her life every day.
Her chief Iraqi captor – who was the head of an insurgent council organized by Abu Musab al Zarqawi – required his hostage to "interview" him for hours on end.

In her last hours of captivity he told her: "forget about the council. Everything is forbidden. You must forget it all."

She couldn't. This is her story.