BAGHDAD, 11 September 2004 — Militants yesterday gave Italy 48 hours to free Muslim women prisoners in Iraq in exchange for two Italian aid workers as the interim Iraqi president promised to do all he could to win the release of the duo.
A statement attributed to the Ansar Al-Zawahri group appeared after Osama Bin Laden’s right-hand man, Ayman Al-Zawahri, warned in a video on Al-Jazeera television that US defeat in Iraq and Afghanistan was only “a matter of time.”
“We ask Italy to promise unconditionally to release all Muslim women prisoners from Iraqi prisons. In return we will give a little information about the Italian female hostages,” said a statement posted on the Internet. The statement’s authenticity could not be verified.
“The Italian government has 24 hours to reply to our demands, otherwise Italian people will never discover the fate of the Italian women hostages,” the statement warned.
It was not immediately clear how many, if any, Iraqi women are being held in Italian-supervised detention facilities in Iraq.
The statement came as Iraqi President Ghazi Al-Yawar told Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi during talks in Rome that he hoped the kidnapping of the two women would be successfully resolved.
Yawar assured Berlusconi of his “total readiness... to secure a positive end to this affair, conscious of the generous contribution that Italy has made to the Iraqi people,” according to a statement issued by the Italian government at the end of the talks.
Simona Pari and Simona Torretta, both 29, were abducted from the Baghdad offices of the charity “Bridge to Baghdad” in broad daylight on Tuesday.
In a botched kidnapping attempt, three Lebanese were killed and one was wounded in Baghdad yesterday, said aides to Lebanese Foreign Minister Jean Obeid, who condemned the “abhorrent act”.
Businessmen Gebrane Badine and Karim Khoury, and Khoury’s wife Evelyne Abou Dib, were gunned down in a Baghdad residence when their driver surprised three gunmen who were about to abduct them, Foreign Ministry officials said.
A fourth Lebanese was also wounded in the kidnapping attempt, the officials said.
The shooting happened in the early hours in the Mansur district of Baghdad, where Badine and Khoury had recently set up a food import business with an Iraqi partner, according to friends in Beirut.
The Lebanese foreign minister “strongly condemned” the killing of the three nationals and called for an inquiry by the Iraqi authorities into “this abhorrent act.”
Meanwhile, top Sunni clerics slammed the US-led coalition yesterday for waging “genocide” in Iraq, after US-led air and ground assaults on insurgents in Tall Afar and Fallujah killed at least 57 people. Tall Afar was sealed off yesterday as US-led operations to rid the northern town of “terrorists” continued. Sheikh Abdel Ghaffur Al-Samarrai told worshippers in Baghdad that this constituted genocide. “What have the residents of Fallujah and Tall Afar done to deserve these atrocities? The occupation forces are committing genocide,” he said. “Where is the UN Security Council?” asked the member of Iraq’s exclusive Committee of Ulema.
In northern Baghdad, Iraqi troops opened fire on hundreds of supporters of Moqtada Sadr as they left a mosque after Friday prayers, killing two men and wounding five people, doctors and witnesses said.
— Additional input from agencies
