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U.S. Releases Iraqi Female Prisoners

Posted on: Friday, 27 January 2006, 15:00 CST

By Sabrina Tavernise New York Times News Service

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- The U.S. military said Thursday that it had released half the Iraqi women held in its prisons, but said the release had been previously scheduled and was unrelated to demands made by the kidnappers of the American journalist Jill Carroll.

The military freed five of the 10 Iraqi women in its custody late Thursday afternoon as part of a regular prisoner release that included more than 400 Iraqis, said Lt. Col. Barry Johnson, a military spokesman.

The release drew attention because advance news of it came after Carroll's captors made their demands last week, saying in a videotape that they would kill her if the United States did not release all Iraqi women from its jails in 72 hours.

But the military said the review of the Iraqi prisoners' cases came long before the kidnappers set their deadline, which expired Friday.

"We do not negotiate or bend to demands of terrorists," Johnson said.

It was not clear Thursday night whether the release of the five women had swayed Carroll's kidnappers, or whether they were even aware it had happened. Nothing has been heard from them since their videotape, which had no sound but showed footage of Carroll speaking, was broadcast by the Arabic satellite network al-Jazeera on Jan. 17.

Carroll, a 28-year-old freelance journalist, was on assignment for The Christian Science Monitor when gunmen seized her on her way to an interview in Baghdad on Jan. 7. Her interpreter was shot dead as he tried to make a phone call.

David Cook, the Monitor's Washington bureau chief, said in an e- mail message that the paper had not had news of Carroll since the video broadcast.

Scattered violence on Thursday left at least 11 Iraqis dead.

Source: Deseret News (Salt Lake City)

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