American journalist Shelly Kittleson is being released a week after she was kidnapped in Baghdad, an Iranian-backed militia in Iraq said Tuesday.
A spokesperson for the Kata’ib Hezbollah militia said in a post on the group’s Telegram messaging app channel that Kittleson was being released on the condition that she leave Iraq immediately.
Her whereabouts were not immediately clear.
Alex Plitsas, Kittleson’s designated point of contact in the U.S. and a CNN national security analyst, previously told CBS News the U.S. government had warned Kittleson about a specific threat against her by Kata’ib Hezbollah, an Iranian-backed paramilitary group that was allegedly looking to kidnap or kill female journalists.
Kittleson was contacted multiple times with warnings of threats against her, including as recently as the night before she was abducted, a U.S. official had told CBS News.
Journalist Kiran Nazish, the founder and director of the Coalition for Women in Journalism, told CBS News last week that Kittleson was traveling to Iraq to stay with a family there who had reassured Kittleson that she shouldn’t worry and that they “would keep her safe.” Kittleson told Nazish in a text message that she had been advised not to travel, but “she was doing what she had always done,” Nazish told CBS News.
Nazish said Kittleson traveled to Iraq and Syria several times before and had “experience reporting on the ground in difficult circumstances.” Kittleson lives in Rome and has spent time in Istanbul.
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