Habaniyah, Iraq ? U.S. Marines who cracked the Jill Carroll kidnapping case say the American journalist was held for a time in a home within sight of a sprawling U.S. military base in western Iraq.

The Marines said the big break occurred May 19 when they searched a suspect’s home near the Taqqadum logistics base seven weeks after Carroll’s release. A young lieutenant linked the residence to intelligence reports in the case.

After one man was arrested near Taqqadum, other troops captured three more suspects and freed two kidnapped Iraqis in other hideouts where Carroll is thought to have been held, including a house that was booby-trapped and full of explosives, the U.S. command said Wednesday.

One of the suspects is a member of the Mujahedeen Shura Council, an umbrella organization of Sunni Arab insurgent groups that includes al-Qaida in Iraq, said Maj. Gen. William Caldwell, who announced the arrests. He said no decision had been made on what legal action to take against the four.

The Associated Press spoke with the Marines last month on condition the interviews not be published until the U.S. military reported the arrests.

Caldwell said the military decided to announce the detentions in part because Carroll had prepared a series of articles for the Christian Science Monitor detailing her abduction, detention and survival. The series will run beginning Monday.

U.S. Marines from Lima Company, 3rd Battalion, 5th Regiment stand in front of a home where American journalist Jill Carroll was thought to have been held in a rural area outside a U.S. air base, in Taqqadum, Iraq. Marines said a May 19 operation about 2 miles outside the Taqqadum logistics hub netted the first of four Iraqis accused of kidnapping Carroll.

Carroll, a freelance journalist for the Monitor, was released March 30 in Baghdad after 82 days in captivity.

Her kidnappers, a previously unknown group calling itself the Revenge Brigade, had threatened to kill her if all female detainees in Iraq were not freed. U.S. officials did release some women before her release but said the decision was unrelated to the demands.

The Christian Science Monitor expressed gratitude for the arrests.

“Like reporters everywhere, we are reassured to hear that several of those believed to have held Jill have been apprehended,” editor Richard Bergenheim said. “The daily threat of kidnapping in Iraq remains acute for all. Everything possible needs to be done to relieve Iraqis and others of this scourge.”

The newspaper said Carroll was “enormously grateful” for the efforts on her behalf but would not comment further, pending the release of a story on its Web site.