American journalist Shelly Kittleson was released Tuesday after being kidnapped in Baghdad last week, according to U.S. and Iraqi officials, with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio confirming the news early Wednesday. Rubio said in a post on X that the United States was “relieved” she was freed and that it was working to support her safe departure from Iraq. He also thanked Iraqi authorities and U.S. agencies including the FBI and the Defense Department for their work toward securing her release.
Kataib Hezbollah, an Iran-backed Iraqi militia, said in a statement that it had decided to free Kittleson, who was abducted on March 31. The militia said the release carried a condition that Kittleson must “leave the country immediately” upon her release. Officials described the development as part of the militia’s decision process rather than as an unqualified surrender, and they linked the release to steps that would follow after she was freed.
Two Iraqi officials who confirmed her release to the Associated Press on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment publicly said Kittleson was freed in the afternoon. They said the journalist had been held in Baghdad before her release, while providing no immediate details on her current whereabouts. A separate AP account also described Kataib Hezbollah’s statement as an “initiative” that would not be repeated in the future.
Rubio’s statement came after Kataib Hezbollah issued its own disclosure, which the officials said marked a notable shift. The AP reported that Kataib Hezbollah had not previously acknowledged that it abducted Kittleson, despite both U.S. and Iraqi officials having blamed the group for the kidnapping. The sequence underscored how militia messaging and U.S. diplomatic confirmation were coordinated in time, while sensitive details about where Kittleson was taken were withheld.
In Wisconsin, Kittleson’s mother, Barb Kittleson, told a reporter who knocked on her door Tuesday that FBI agents were at her home. The AP reported that she initially said her daughter had not yet been freed, and later said she did not know whether Kittleson had been released or not, while an update from the Kittleson family was not immediately available after Rubio confirmed the release. Caroline Clancy, a spokesperson for the FBI’s Milwaukee field office, declined to comment.
The AP described Kittleson as a freelance journalist who lived abroad for years and had built a career covering the Middle East, including Iraq and Syria. It said she had returned to Iraq shortly before her abduction. U.S. officials have said they warned her multiple times of threats and that she did not want to leave.
Details from Iraqi officials earlier in the case described the kidnapping as involving two cars, including one that crashed while being pursued near the town of al-Haswa in Babil province, southwest of Baghdad. Afterward, the journalist was transferred to a second car that fled the scene. Other Iraqi officials also told the AP that attempts to negotiate her release faced obstacles, with sources again speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the sensitive case.
As negotiations unfolded, officials said intermediaries within the Popular Mobilization Forces—an umbrella coalition of Iran-backed militias nominally under the Iraqi military—were tasked with communicating with the abductors but ran into difficulties reaching Kataib Hezbollah leadership. One official said the primary challenge was that Kataib Hezbollah commanders were “nowhere to be found,” making contact extremely complex because the leaders had gone underground to avoid being targeted. Iraqi officials said authorities were willing to release six Kataib Hezbollah members who are detained in connection with attacks on a U.S. base in Syria, according to the AP account.
Kataib Hezbollah’s statement about Kittleson’s release did not provide additional operational details, but it said the decision came “in appreciation of the patriotic stances of the outgoing” Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani. The AP reported that the militia has previously been accused of kidnapping foreigners, and cited a past case involving Elizabeth Tsurkov, a Princeton graduate student with Israeli and Russian citizenship, who disappeared in Baghdad in 2023 and later told U.S. authorities in 2025 that she had been held by Kataib Hezbollah.
Associated Press writers Todd Richmond in Mount Horeb, Wisconsin, Abby Sewell in Beirut and Matthew Lee and Eric Tucker in Washington contributed to this report.