Ex-hostage Carroll reunites with family in U.S.

BOSTON, Apr 2 (Reuters) Jill Carroll, the American journalist held in captivity for 82 days in Iraq, returned home to the United States on Sunday for a reunion with family who had made emotional appeals for her freedom.

Carroll, who has described her captivity by Islamic militants as a horrific ordeal in a cave-like room sealed off to the world, flew into Boston's Logan Airport aboard a packed commercial jet, and was whisked from the airport out of sight of journalists.

She left the airport in a black limousine escorted by state police.

Carroll was abducted in Baghdad on January 7 by armed militants who killed her Iraqi translator and released 12 weeks later on Thursday.

Her newspaper said it wanted to respect Carroll's wishes to spend quiet time with family.

A day earlier the 28-year-old reporter forcefully disavowed critical statements she made about the United States and President George W. Bush, saying she had been coerced into making a propaganda video and threatened repeatedly.

In the video made before her release and posted on a jihadist Web site, Carroll denounced the U.S. presence in Iraq and praised the militants fighting American forces there, predicting they would prevail over American soldiers.

''Things that I was forced to say while captive are now being taken by some as an accurate reflection of my personal views. They are not,'' she said in a statement read in Boston by Richard Bergenheim, editor of The Christian Science Monitor, her Boston-based employer.

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