Hostage Jill Carroll Freed

A journalist held hostage for almost three months in Iraq is free.

An editor for the Christian Science Monitor says reporter Jill Carroll has been released and is healthy. Editor David Cook says Carroll was released this morning and has talked to her father.

Her release is also confirmed by Iraqi police and the leader of the Iraqi Islamic Party.

Police say she was handed over to the Iraqi Islamic Party at its office in western Baghdad and was later turned over to the Americans. She's believed to be in the safety now of the heavily fortified Green Zone.

The 28-year-old American was working as a freelance writer for the Monitor and was kidnapped by gunmen January Seventh while on her way to interview a Sunni Arab politician in Baghdad. Her translator was killed.

Her captors, calling themselves the Revenge Brigades, had demanded the release of all women detainees in Iraq by Feb. 26 and said Carroll would be killed if that didn't happen. The date came and went with no word about her welfare.