{"id":56494,"date":"2026-04-07T21:49:09","date_gmt":"2026-04-07T21:49:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/56494\/"},"modified":"2026-04-07T21:49:09","modified_gmt":"2026-04-07T21:49:09","slug":"american-journalist-shelly-kittleson-has-been-released","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/56494\/","title":{"rendered":"American journalist Shelly Kittleson has been released"},"content":{"rendered":"

The U.S. State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Typically, the State Department does not confirm the release of Americans abducted abroad until they have been transferred to U.S. government hands or have safely left a country.<\/p>\n

\"UAUA journalist Shelly Kittleson poses for a cellphone photo in a cafe in Baghdad, Iraq, on March 25.Uncredited\/Associated Press<\/p>\n

In Wisconsin, Kittleson\u2019s mother said her daughter was not yet free and declined to comment further.<\/p>\n

According to one of the two Iraqi officials, Kittleson was freed in the afternoon. The officials, who spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment publicly, did not share her current whereabouts but said that prior to her release, Kittleson had been held in Baghdad.<\/p>\n

In its statement, Kataib Hezbollah said its decision came \u201cin appreciation of the patriotic stances of the outgoing\u201d Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani, without giving more details.<\/p>\n

It added that \u201cthis initiative will not be repeated in the future.\u201d<\/p>\n

In Mount Horeb, Wisconsin, Kittleson\u2019s mother told a reporter who knocked on her door that FBI agents were at her home. A number of people could be seen sitting at Barb Kittleson\u2019s kitchen table.<\/p>\n

Caroline Clancy, a spokesperson for the FBI\u2019s Milwaukee field office, did not immediately respond to an email asking for more information.<\/p>\n

Kataib Hezbollah had not previously acknowledged that it was the one responsible for Kittleson\u2019s abduction, although both U.S. and Iraqi officials had pointed fingers at the group.<\/p>\n

A respected journalist in conflict zones<\/p>\n

Kittleson, 49, a freelance journalist, had lived abroad for years before the kidnapping, using Rome as her base for a time and building a respected journalism career across the Middle East, particularly in Iraq and Syria. Like many freelancers, she often worked on a shoestring budget and without the protections afforded by large news organizations to staff.<\/p>\n

She had entered Iraq again shortly before her abduction. U.S. officials have said that they warned her multiple times of threats against her<\/a>, but that she did not want to leave.<\/p>\n

Iraqi officials have said that two cars were involved in the kidnapping, one of which crashed while being pursued near the town of al-Haswa in Babil province, southwest of Baghdad. The journalist was then transferred to a second car that fled the scene.<\/p>\n

Three other Iraqi officials said earlier Tuesday that attempts to negotiate her release had run into obstacles. The two Iraqi security officials and one official from the pro-Iran Coordination Framework political bloc spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak about the sensitive case publicly.<\/p>\n

According to one of the security officials, a member of the Popular Mobilization Forces, a coalition of Iran-backed militias that is nominally under the control of the Iraqi military, had been tasked with communicating with the abductors to secure Kittleson\u2019s release but had run into difficulties in communicating with the Kataib Hezbollah leadership.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe primary challenge is that the leaders of the Kataib militia \u2014 specifically, the commanders of the battalions \u2014 are nowhere to be found. No one knows their whereabouts, and the process of establishing contact with them is extremely complex,\u201d the security officials said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese leaders have gone underground, maintaining no active lines of communication, out of fear of being targeted,\u201d they added.<\/p>\n

According to the officials, a message had been sent to the Kataib leadership to determine their demands in exchange for releasing Kittleson. Iraqi authorities were willing to release six Kataib Hezbollah members who are currently detained, most of them in connection with attacks on a U.S. base in Syria, they said.<\/p>\n

Kataib Hezbollah has previously been accused of kidnapping foreigners.<\/p>\n

Elizabeth Tsurkov, a Princeton graduate student with Israeli and Russian citizenship, disappeared in Baghdad in 2023. After she was freed and handed over to U.S. authorities in September 2025, she said that she had been held by Kataib Hezbollah.<\/p>\n

The group never officially claimed responsibility for kidnapping Tsurkov.<\/p>\n

Iran-backed militias in Iraq have also launched regular attacks on U.S. facilities in the country since the beginning of the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran.<\/p>\n

Associated Press writers Todd Richmond in Mount Horeb, Wisconsin, and Matthew Lee and Eric Tucker in Washington contributed to this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The U.S. State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Typically, the State Department does…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":56495,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[2371,197,94,5755,768,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-56494","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-iraq","8":"tag-2024-2026-mideast-wars","9":"tag-general-news","10":"tag-iraq","11":"tag-kidnapping","12":"tag-military-and-defense","13":"tag-world-news"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/116365634007175969","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56494","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=56494"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56494\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/56495"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=56494"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=56494"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=56494"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}