Italy debates price of freeing hostages

By Seattle Times news services

ALESSANDRA TARANTINO / AP Simona Torretta, left, smiles as she removes a poster of herself and Simona Pari that was hanging yesterday in Rome.

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Amid reports that at least $1 million was paid for the release of Simona Pari and Simona Torretta after 21 days of agonizing negotiations with their captors, Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi said only that the government made "a very difficult choice."

But Gustavo Selva, chairman of parliament's foreign affairs committee, confirmed that the two women were saved by cash. "The lives of the girls was the most important thing," Selva said in an interview with France's RTL radio.

"In principle, we shouldn't give in to blackmail but this time we had to, although it's a dangerous path to take because, obviously, it could encourage others to take hostages, either for political reasons or for criminal reasons," he said.

Kidnappers are holding Briton Kenneth Bigley, who was shown in a new video yesterday pleading with Prime Minister Tony Blair to meet his kidnappers' demands and save his life.

Blair said his government was doing everything it could to secure Bigley's release, including attempting to communicate directly with Tawhid and Jihad, the group led by Jordanian Abu Musab al-Zarqawi that's holding Bigley. But Blair has repeatedly said he would not bargain for Bigley's release.

The group has demanded that female prisoners in U.S.-run jails in Iraq be released.

Bigley was kidnapped two weeks ago along with Americans Eugene Armstrong and Jack Hensley, both of whom were beheaded last week.

More than 140 foreigners have been seized in Iraq in a wave of abductions that began in April. Most of them have been released, but around 30 have been killed, some by beheading.

Over the past year or more, hundreds of Iraqis — doctors, surgeons and prominent businessmen — have been kidnapped by criminal gangs who demand ransoms of as much as $100,000.

Now, with so many easily identifiable foreigners in Iraq, criminals appear to have branched out, targeting more lucrative Westerners and foreign workers, as well as locals.
 
In Britain and France, there have been no suggestions that a ransom should be paid for nationals being held captive. Two French journalists, Christian Chesnot and George Malbrunot, disappeared in August and have appeared in a video that called for France to scrap a law banning girls from wearing the traditional Muslim headscarf in state schools.

Other countries have faced similar situations:

• The Philippines in July won the freedom of an abducted truck driver by agreeing to withdraw its 51 peacekeepers from Iraq. Despite official denials, there were persistent reports that Manila had tried to arrange a ransom but was rebuffed.

• In June, a 26-year-old Lebanese construction worker was shot to death by his kidnappers. The Lebanese Foreign Ministry said the killers sought a ransom.

• Kuwait's largest transportation firm, KGL, acknowledged it paid $500,000 to free its hostages.

• Many truck drivers from neighboring Turkey and Jordan have been freed, frequently in return for ransoms paid by their employers.

In Spain — which withdrew its forces from Iraq after the March 11 train bombings in Madrid and the election of a Socialist government opposed to the war — Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos congratulated Italy on the release, but warned that "the blackmail of the terrorists must never triumph."

Speculation about a ransom began after Kuwaiti newspaper Al-rai al-Aam reported on Tuesday that a $1 million ransom had been demanded for the women's release and that half the amount was paid Monday.

The Italian papers La Repubblica and Corriere della Sera reported that the kidnappers originally demanded a pullout of Italy's 3,000 troops in Iraq and a $5 million ransom. The reports said Italian negotiators brought the ransom figure down while making clear that a withdrawal was out of the question.

Senior Iraqi officials and foreign security consultants say ransom payments will only encourage abductions, while pushing up captors' financial demands.

"The reason for the acceleration in kidnappings is simply because ransoms are being paid, that's it," said Sabah Kadhim, a spokesman for Iraq's Interior Ministry. "As a government, we discourage the payment of any ransom. But we have information that kidnappers are being paid, perhaps not directly by governments, but via other channels, through clerics and others who have contact with the kidnappers.

"You can understand why they pay, but it fuels the problem."

Kadhim estimates that about 90 percent of the kidnappings in Iraq are carried out by criminal gangs, who then trade the captives on to militant Islamic groups and other factions.

"If the criminals don't get their money within 72 hours or so, they sell them up the chain to other groups," said a British security consultant who has been operating in Iraq for a year.

"There's vast amounts of money being paid, whether it's by companies, families or governments. It's a very, very good business," he said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Aware that it has a crisis on its hands, the Iraqi government has formed specialist hostage-negotiation teams, helped by the FBI, CIA and other agencies.

Meanwhile, the ransoms not only pay for criminals' lifestyles, but Kadhim said he believes some Iraqi clerics have profited from acting as intermediaries in talks with kidnappers. And the security consultant said some of the money fuels the insurgency.

The ransom question is particularly delicate in Italy, which for decades has maintained a tough stance against domestic kidnappings. A 1990 law freezes the assets of hostages and their families to prevent ransom payments. The legislation, often applied despite desperate appeals from relatives willing to pay, is credited with reducing abductions domestically.

Yesterday, both aid workers emerged smiling outside their homes to thank those who had negotiated their release. They said they had been blindfolded and did not know where they had been held or by whom.

The Arabic-speaking women said they had been treated with utmost respect and rarely feared for their lives. Their kidnappers gave them sweets, cakes, and English language copies of the Quran. Colleagues said they even appeared to have put on weight.

Torretta said she believed her captors were a religious, nonpolitical group, probably Sunni Muslims.

Neither Torretta nor Pari expressed rancor for Iraq itself, and each said she wanted to return to the country and people she "loved" despite their abductions.

Most Italians continued to express relief after a night in which flowers were thrown, car horns honked, and peace flags were flown around the country.

"So we paid," said a woman in Rome. "If we hadn't ... the girls would have come in pieces inside a box."

Compiled from The Christian Science Monitor, Reuters, The Associated Press, Los Angeles Times, Knight Ridder Newspapers, The Chicago Tribune and Dallas Morning News.