october 2004

iraq

17 September, 2004

A BRIDGE TO BAGHDAD

Dear friends, 

Following is an update on the kidnapping of my Italian friends(up-date of their release at end this text.JB)that you won’t read in the Daily Telegraph. The Western media in general will ignore this. After learning more details of the ‘kidnap’ from friends in Baghdad and knowing how large and powerful the coalition ‘intelligence’ community is there, I feel that there is substance to this story. Who would want, more than anyone else, that loud, brave anti-occupation activists leave Iraq as things get worse?   Thank God for independent media.

Your pilgrim, Donna

I heard tonight from Baghdad that a leak from Prime Minister Allawi’s office suggests they are held by the Government, that a ransom will be negotiated soon and criminals blamed for the kidnapping.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,
1305523,00.html

Who seized Simona Torretta?

This Iraqi kidnapping has the mark of an undercover police operation

Naomi Klein and Jeremy Scahill

Thursday September 16, 2004 The Guardian

When Simona Torretta returned to Baghdad in March 2003, in the midst of the "shock and awe" aerial bombardment, her Iraqi friends greeted her by telling her she was nuts. "They were just so surprised to see me. They said, 'Why are you coming here? Go back to Italy. Are you crazy?'"

But Torretta didn't go back. She stayed throughout the invasion, continuing the humanitarian work she began in 1996, when she first visited Iraq with her anti-sanctions NGO, A Bridge to Baghdad. When Baghdad fell, Torretta again opted to stay, this time to bring medicine and water to Iraqis suffering under occupation. Even after resistance fighters began targeting foreigners, and most foreign journalists and aid workers fled, Torretta again returned. "I cannot stay in Italy," the 29-year-old told a documentary film-maker. Today, Torretta's life is in danger, along with the lives of her fellow Italian aid worker Simona Pari, and their Iraqi colleagues Raad Ali Abdul Azziz and Mahnouz Bassam. Eight days ago, the four were snatched at gunpoint from their home/office in Baghdad and have not been heard from since. In the absence of direct communication from their abductors, political controversy swirls round the incident. Proponents of the war are using it to paint peaceniks as naive, blithely supporting a resistance that answers international solidarity with kidnappings and beheadings. Meanwhile, a growing number of Islamic leaders are hinting that the raid on A Bridge to Baghdad was not the work of mujahideen, but of foreign intelligence agencies out to discredit the resistance.

Nothing about this kidnapping fits the pattern of other abductions. Most are opportunistic attacks on treacherous stretches of road. Torretta and her colleagues were coldly hunted down in their home. And while mujahideen in Iraq scrupulously hide their identities, making sure to wrap their faces in scarves, these kidnappers were bare-faced and clean-shaven, some in business suits. One assailant was addressed by the others as "sir".

Kidnap victims have overwhelmingly been men, yet three of these four are women. Witnesses say the gunmen questioned staff in the building until the Simonas were identified by name, and that Mahnouz Bassam, an Iraqi woman, was dragged screaming by her headscarf, a shocking religious transgression for an attack supposedly carried out in the name of Islam.

Most extraordinary was the size of the operation: rather than the usual three or four fighters, 20 armed men pulled up to the house in broad daylight, seemingly unconcerned about being caught. Only blocks from the heavily patrolled Green Zone, the whole operation went off with no interference from Iraqi police or US military - although Newsweek reported that "about 15 minutes afterwards, an American Humvee convoy passed hardly a block away".

And then there were the weapons. The attackers were armed with AK-47s, shotguns, pistols with silencers and stun guns - hardly the mujahideen's standard-issue rusty Kalashnikovs. Strangest of all is this detail: witnesses said that several attackers wore Iraqi National Guard uniforms and identified themselves as working for Ayad Allawi, the interim prime minister.

An Iraqi government spokesperson denied that Allawi's office was involved. But Sabah Kadhim, a spokesperson for the interior ministry, conceded that the kidnappers "were wearing military uniforms and flak jackets". So was this a kidnapping by the resistance or a covert police operation? Or was it something worse: a revival of Saddam's mukhabarat disappearances, when agents would arrest enemies of the regime, never to be heard from again? Who could have pulled off such a coordinated operation - and who stands to benefit from an attack on this anti-war NGO?

On Monday, the Italian press began reporting on one possible answer. Sheikh Abdul Salam al-Kubaisi, from Iraq's leading Sunni cleric organisation, told reporters in Baghdad that he received a visit from Torretta and Pari the day before the kidnap. "They were scared," the cleric said. "They told me that someone threatened them." Asked who was behind the threats, al-Kubaisi replied: "We suspect some foreign intelligence."

Blaming unpopular resistance attacks on CIA or Mossad conspiracies is idle chatter in Baghdad, but coming from Kubaisi, the claim carries unusual weight; he has ties with a range of resistance groups and has brokered the release of several hostages. Kubaisi's allegations have been widely reported in Arab media, as well as in Italy, but have been absent from the English-language press.

Western journalists are loath to talk about spies for fear of being labelled conspiracy theorists. But spies and covert operations are not a conspiracy in Iraq; they are a daily reality. According to CIA deputy director James L Pavitt, "Baghdad is home to the largest CIA station since the Vietnam war", with 500 to 600 agents on the ground. Allawi himself is a lifelong spook who has worked with MI6, the CIA and the mukhabarat, specialising in removing enemies of the regime.

A Bridge to Baghdad has been unapologetic in its opposition to the occupation regime. During the siege of Falluja in April, it coordinated risky humanitarian missions. US forces had sealed the road to Falluja and banished the press as they prepared to punish the entire city for the gruesome killings of four Blackwater mercenaries. In August, when US marines laid siege to Najaf, A Bridge to Baghdad again went where the occupation forces wanted no witnesses. And the day before their kidnapping, Torretta and Pari told Kubaisi that they were planning yet another high-risk mission to Falluja.

In the eight days since their abduction, pleas for their release have crossed all geographical, religious and cultural lines. The Palestinian group Islamic Jihad, Hizbullah, the International Association of Islamic Scholars and several Iraqi resistance groups have all voiced outrage. A resistance group in Falluja said the kidnap suggests collaboration with foreign forces. Yet some voices are conspicuous by their absence: the White House and the office of Allawi. Neither has said a word.

What we do know is this: if this hostage-taking ends in bloodshed, Washington, Rome and their Iraqi surrogates will be quick to use the tragedy to justify the brutal occupation - an occupation that Simona Torretta, Simona Pari, Raad Ali Abdul Azziz and Mahnouz Bassam risked their lives to oppose. And we will be left wondering whether that was the plan all along.

Naomi Klein is the author of No Logo and Fences and Windows Jeremy Scahill is a reporter for the independent US radio/TV show Democracy Now;
(A BRIDGE TO BAGHDAD the American version www.dctvny.org/b2b/Days after the U.S. declared the war officially over, Next Next Entertainment and DCTV sent a crew to a now smoldering Baghdad to rediscover the young Iraqis. While the American teenagers waited anxiously stateside for phone calls and emails...Bridge to Baghdad II allows these two groups to resume the conversation that was cut short by a war. )


RELEASE!

Arabic television station al-Jazeera broadcast footage of the two Italian women, aged 29, being released.
BBC Sept.29th

Two Italian female aid workers held hostage in Iraq for the last three weeks have been released.

They were handed over to the Red Cross in Iraq's capital, Baghdad, and arrived back in Italy late on Tuesday.

Simona Pari and Simona Torretta, who were seized in their Baghdad office on 7 September, appeared in good health.

Arabic television station al-Jazeera showed them in an open field, wearing black veils over their faces, which they later lifted, smiling and chatting as they are met by three men.

"Shukran, shukran gesilan, ma salama [Thanks, thanks a million, good-bye]," says one of the women.

The two Iraqi aid workers - Raad Ali Aziz and Mahnaz Bassam - seized with the two women had also been freed.

Simona Torretta's family reacted swiftly on Italian television, expressing their joy at the news she had survived her ordeal.

"We've spoken to the Baghdad ambassador. The information is 100% certain and we are already celebrating," said Annamaria Torretta, her mother, on Italian television.

"I'm so happy, overwhelmingly happy," said Simona Pari's father, Luciano, from his home in Rimini on the Adriatic coast. "This was the news I had been hoping for.

"I wish to take this opportunity to thank you and to thank the entire Arab world, who proved their friendship to us and to Italy, especially at these difficult times," he told al-Jazeera.

The two women were working for the aid agency A Bridge to Baghdad and had been involved in school and water projects.