ROME, 30 September 2004 — Safely home in Italy, two women aid workers spoke of returning to Iraq yesterday despite a three-week hostage ordeal as their overjoyed nation shrugged off reports that a ransom was paid to free them.
Iraqi officials and foreign security consultants warned that ransom payments would only encourage more abductions.
Simona Pari and Simona Torretta, both 29, said they were taught about Islam and not harmed. After a hero’s welcome in Rome late on Tuesday, they looked to put the kidnap behind them.
“I want to send a hello and a big kiss to all the people of Iraq, to all our friends,” a smiling Pari told reporters outside her home in Rimini on Italy’s northeastern Adriatic coast.
“I miss the children, the women, all our Iraqi friends and all the Iraqi people a great deal, we know they were close to us at this time,” she said.
“I hope to return to Iraq soon. It’s a country that I really love,” Pari said. “We were always treated with a lot of respect.”
“I am very happy but of course I miss Simona (Torretta) a lot,” she said. The two friends were held together after being seized on Sept. 7.
“We have to keep on understanding what is happening in Iraq,” she said. “We have to denounce it, to seek to modify this horrible reality.”
Asked if that meant the withdrawal of foreign troops from the country she answered: “Even a withdrawal of the troops.”
Italy has about 3,000 troops in Iraq as part of the international US-led force and has refused to pull them out in the face of threats to hostages.
“I ask everyone not to forget Iraq because horrible things are happening at the moment,” Pari said.
Torretta was quoted as saying she would “do it all over again, with all of the consequences”.
“We never understood. But they apologized for kidnapping us and they even asked us for forgiveness,” she told reporters.
They were kept blindfolded throughout the ordeal and never saw their captors, a source said after the women spoke to police.
Foreign Minister Franco Frattini tried to quash talk about a ransom cash payment, saying Italy just capitalized on years of good deeds in the Arab world to secure their release.
“We’ve cashed a big credit. That’s the ransom we’ve paid,” he said. “A credit for all of the good things Italy has done.”
But most newspapers and a leading figure in the ruling coalition spoke openly of a ransom of $1 million or more. The issue caused little controversy in Italy, which has a long history of paying money to homegrown kidnap gangs.
“Yes it was paid, it was right because the life of the two girls was more important than the money. I think it was paid by the intelligence services,” Gustavo Selva, chairman of parliament’s foreign affairs committee, said.
“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.
Officials in Iraq said such payments were fueling the kidnapping trade: “The reason for the acceleration in kidnappings is simply that ransoms are being paid,” said Sabah Kadhim, a spokesman for Iraq’s Interior Ministry.
Around 130 foreigners have been seized in a wave of abductions that began in April. Most of them have been released, but around 30 have been killed. Hundreds of Iraqis have also been seized but their plight rarely makes world headlines.
The case of “the two Simonas” differed from many other high-profile abductions in that the kidnappers showed no images of them throughout their captivity, and did not force them to plead for political concessions before cameras.
A very different set of 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. Two French journalists have also appeared in a video that called for a change in French policy.
The Simonas’ kidnapping was also very different from that of Italian journalist Enzo Baldoni, who was killed last month after Rome refused to withdraw its 2,700 troops from Iraq.
For Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, a strong US ally who has promised to keep soldiers in Iraq for as long as necessary, the Simonas’ release was a triumph — with or without a ransom. Italian newspapers quoted the prime minister as saying: “Controversy about the ransom? I don’t think there can be any.”
