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Carroll praises insurgents in videoFather: Propaganda tape was kidnap victim's price for freedom
![]() In the video, Jill Carroll says Iraq's insurgents are "very smart" and ultimately will win the war. RELATEDSPECIAL REPORT
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YOUR E-MAIL ALERTSBAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- American journalist Jill Carroll, who was released this week after being held hostage in Iraq for almost three months, has slammed the United States and praised Iraqi insurgents in a video posted on an Islamist Web site. A counterterrorism expert says Carroll may have been experiencing a touch of Stockholm syndrome, a defense mechanism in which kidnap victims empathize with their captors. However, Carroll's father flatly said his daughter was merely giving the kidnappers what they wanted so she wouldn't be killed. In the video, Carroll discusses her release with a man who may be one of her captors. She says that the mujahedeen has treated her well, kept her safe and was able to elude the U.S. military because its members are "very smart." She also calls the war "illegal" and says President George Bush needs to stop it. "The mujahedeen are the ones that will win in the end," she says, adding that the insurgents "are good people fighting an honorable fight while the Americans are here as an occupying force treating the people in a very bad way." Her father, however, told The Christian Science Monitor -- the paper she was freelancing for when she was abducted -- that she made the video to meet a final demand made by her captors, the newspaper reported Friday. The article's headline was "Jill Carroll forced to make propaganda video as price of freedom." Jim Carroll said his daughter had reason to comply after the insurgents killed her translator, Allan Enwiya, and told her before filming the video that they had just killed an American hostage. "She had been taught to fear them," Jim Carroll said, according to the Monitor. "After listening to them for three months she already knew exactly what they wanted her to say, so she gave it to them with appropriate acting to make it look convincing." The kidnappers, Jim Carroll told the Monitor, "obviously wanted maximum propaganda value in the U.S." The Monitor article also quotes Jill Carroll's colleagues -- including a U.S. Marine Corps public affairs officer -- praising the 28-year-old's neutrality on matters she was reporting. "Her professionalism and objectivity were unparalleled within the media community," Capt. Patrick Kerr told the Monitor. Carroll has not spoken publicly about her ordeal or the video, and a spokesman for the Monitor refused to comment on the story beyond saying that it stood on its own. Counterterrorism expert Laura Mansfield speculated that Carroll may have made the comments after being subjected to her captors' thinking for 83 days. It would not be surprising for Carroll to come away with a "heightened affection" for the mujahedeen, she said. "That's what she's been spoon-fed for nearly three months," Mansfield said. A man, presumably a member of the Brigades of Vengeance, which has claimed responsibility for Carroll's kidnapping, reads a statement in Arabic at the end of the video. He levels an accusation at U.S. troops, saying they "show off their power by going around killing innocent, unarmed people, but they're unable to free [Carroll] and were unable to stop us from abducting her." He also said Carroll was released only after the U.S. government partially met the group's demands by releasing some female prisoners it had in custody -- a claim U.S. authorities deny -- and he praises reporters in general as "friends and brothers to the mujahedeen." "They are their voice that booms around the world. Jill Carroll go back in peace to your friends and family and tell the American people about what you've seen and heard in the last three months," the man says. CNN cannot authenticate the source of the video. It is not clear when or where it was taped. CNN's Octavia Nasr and Susan Garraty contributed to this report.
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