Habaniyah, Iraq – U.S. Marines who cracked the Jill Carroll kidnapping case say the American journalist was held for a time in a home within sight of a sprawling U.S. military base in western Iraq.
The Marines said the big break occurred May 19 when they searched a suspect’s home near the Taqqadum logistics base seven weeks after Carroll’s release. A young lieutenant linked the residence to intelligence reports in the case.
After one man was arrested near Taqqadum, other troops captured three more suspects and freed two kidnapped Iraqis in other hideouts where Carroll is thought to have been held, including a house that was booby- trapped and full of explosives, the U.S. command said Wednesday.
One of the suspects is a member of the Mujahedeen Shura Council, an umbrella organization of Sunni Arab insurgent groups that includes al-Qaeda in Iraq, said Maj. Gen. William Caldwell, who announced the arrests. He said no decision had been made on what legal action to take against the four.
The Associated Press spoke with the Marines last month on condition that the interviews not be published until the U.S. military reported the arrests.
Caldwell said the military decided to announce the detentions in part because Carroll had prepared a series of articles for the Christian Science Monitor detailing her abduction, detention and survival. (The Denver Post will publish the series beginning Monday.)
Carroll, a freelance journalist for the Monitor, was released March 30 in Baghdad after 82 days in captivity.
Her kidnappers, a previously unknown group calling itself the Revenge Brigade, had threatened to kill her if all female detainees in Iraq were not freed.
U.S. officials did free some women before her release but said the decision was unrelated to the demands.
Marines said independent tips led them to a cluster of houses near an abandoned train station outside the Taqqadum base, near Fallujah and about 50 miles west of Baghdad. A one- story home in the relatively peaceful neighborhood that Marines often drove by matched the tips.
“Where it’s at, there’s a mosque, a school. It blends into the neighborhood. It’s like any other house,” said 1st. Sgt. Chris Reed, 32, of Kirkland, Wash., who helped arrest the first suspect.
On the afternoon of the operation, 20 Marines from Company L, 3rd Battalion, 5th Regiment driving to the targeted home were struck by a roadside bomb, although none was injured.
Shortly afterward, a second nearby bomb exploded and insurgents fired from a car several hundred yards away.
“We knew it was a limited time window. It was our best shot at it,” said 1st Lt. Jake Cusack, 24, of Grand Rapids, Mich., who matched the intelligence reports that led to the home and the suspects.
