Jill Carroll's Chief Captor Claimed to Lead Terror Group in Iraq

By: Abducted journalist Jill Carroll feared she would be beheaded when her chief captor, a man whose face always was hidden from her, told her he had been named to lead a group of Iraqi insurgents with close ties to al-Qaida.

The man praised Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian leader of al-Qaida in Iraq, and told her his group had asked Zarqawi to step aside so Iraqis could lead the insurgency, Carroll said. He said they needed to put an Iraqi face on it.

"I was panicked. I couldn't even move," Carroll, who grew up in Ann Arbor, Mich., wrote Monday in the sixth installment of a series about the 82 days she spent in captivity. "This man was telling me he was friends with Zarqawi -- someone who personally beheaded hostages."

She described how the man she knew as Abu Nour sat just outside the door of the room where she was held and started speaking one day in glowing terms about Zarqawi.

"He's a very good man, and he's my friend. ... If you met him, you would like him so much," Abu Nour told her, according to the report in the Christian Science Monitor, where Carroll is now a staff writer.

The 28-year-old reporter, then working as a freelancer, was kidnapped in Baghdad on Jan. 7.

According to the Monitor series, Abu Nour told Carroll he was the newly named head of the Mujahedin Shura Council, an umbrella organization of jihadi groups fighting in Iraq. He said the group asked Zarqawi to step aside so Iraqis could lead the insurgent fight. He said he was also known as Abdullah Rashid, who senior Iraqi police investigators say is the head of the MSC, the paper said.

"The Americans are always saying that foreigners are leading the mujahedin, so people need to see an Iraqi face, and he (Zarqawi) agreed," he told Carroll, according to the Monitor report. "When the editor of your newspaper finds out you spoke to Abdullah Rashid, he will be very happy."

A senior U.S. official told the Monitor that Abdullah Rashid exaggerated his importance, and that the MSC is operationally minor. The MSC "are a few guys and a dog and an Internet connection," he said. "Al Qaeda really drives the agenda."

Carroll said her captors shared with her the objective of al-Qaida and their world view.