US journalist Jill Carroll has been released almost 12 weeks after being abducted at gunpoint on a Baghdad street, Sunni politician Tariq al-Hashimi told the agency on Thursday.
"She is free and is with me right now," Hashimi said, but did not give further details.
The journalist, who was freelancing for the Boston-based Christian Science Monitor, was seized on January 7 in the Iraqi capital by armed men who shot dead her interpreter.
Her release came a week after US and British forces rescued three oither Western hostages who had been held captive in Iraq for almost four months and followed an appeal by her twin sister Katie on Wednesday.
Hashimi said Carroll, 28, did not wanted her pictures to be taken by the media.
Carroll had appeared in three videos broadcast on Arab television since she was seized while she was on her way to meet Sunni politician Adnan al-Dulaimi at his office in Baghdad.
Carroll's captors set numerous deadlines threatening to kill her if US-led forces failed to release all female detainees in Iraq.
"It has been nearly two months since the last video of my sister was broadcast. We have had no contact with her nor received any information about her condition," Katie Carroll had said in her appeal on Dubai-based Al-Arabiya television.
{{/usCountry}}"It has been nearly two months since the last video of my sister was broadcast. We have had no contact with her nor received any information about her condition," Katie Carroll had said in her appeal on Dubai-based Al-Arabiya television.
{{/usCountry}}"I've been living a nightmare, worrying if she is hurt or ill," she said.