Jill Carroll Released, Safe and Unharmed.

How about some GOOD news for a change?

The Christian Science Monitor posted the following simple and powerful message on its website at 7:03 this morning:

After being held hostage for nearly three months, Jill Carroll is free.

The Washington Post reports this morning that "American journalist Jill Carroll, abducted in early January by gunmen in Baghdad, was released to a Sunni Arab political party in the capital Thursday morning after 82 days in captivity." Carroll's statement:

"I was treated very well. That's important for people to know," she said in an interview with an Arabic-speaking questioner at the headquarters of the Iraqi Islamic Party. "They never hit me, they never even threatened to hit me. I'm just happy to be free, and I want to be with my family."

Carroll said that she does not know where she was held or why her kidnappers decided to release her. During her captivity, Carroll spent her days sitting in a small room with one window, was fed well, allowed to shower whenever she wanted, but given very little information from the outside world.

Carroll's captors had previously aired videotapes in which they threatened to kill Carroll unless all female prisoners in American detention facilities in Iraq was released. Carroll was last seen in a February 9 video broadcast on Kuwaiti television, in which Carroll asked her supporters to do whatever was necessary to gain her release.

CNN.com has more on the developing story.