The Captured Italian Women: Has there been any update on them?

[hlthe2b]

I've been searching this afternoon, but since the unconfirmed report of their murders last night, I've seen nothing....

I hope they are ok. Also the British man and any others that we may not be so aware of....

[dietdpfan]

1. What's this all about?

This is the first I have heard of this story. Details please?

[hlthe2b]

2. this was an earlier post on them:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=857513

[hlthe2b]

3. and here is a UK Guardian article by Naomi Klein that underscores

some very unusual and disturbing aspects of the case:
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0916-11.htm

Who Seized Simona Torretta?
This Iraqi Kidnapping has the Mark of an Undercover Police Operation
by Naomi Klein and Jeremy Scahill
--snip--
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 automatic rifles, pump-action 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.
--more--

[JSJ]

5. i'm with naomi- i vote inside job nt

[Aunt Anti-bush]

4. From Reuters:

Night of anguish as Italy prays they're alive
September 24, 2004

Rome: Italy's government tried to reassure an anguished nation that the country's two women hostages in Iraq were most likely still alive.

A group calling itself the Jihad Organisation said it had killed the women because Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi had not withdrawn Italian troops from Iraq.

Parliamentary speaker, Pierferdinando Casini, said the government believed the claims were "unreliable" and was treating them with "total suspicion".

Simona Pari and Simona Torretta, both 29, were kidnapped in Baghdad on September 7 with two Iraqi colleagues.

Early yesterday the Jihad Organisation said the women were dead. "We announce that God's verdict has been passed on the two Italian prisoners by slaughtering," it said.


A group calling itself Supporters of Zawahri, later said in a web statement it had beheaded the Italian women.

Italian newspapers told of "a night of anguish" for the families of the two who worked on charity projects in Baghdad and were the first Western women kidnapped.

"If they have killed them, they have killed the good of the world," Torretta's mother said. "I hope it is not true, it can't be true. These reports have killed us. We don't want to believe them. We are hanging by a thread of hope." - Reuters

*************

So, I guess there still is no confirmation either way and I, too, pray they're ok. The sad thing is that so far when these creeps say they've killed someone and the officials have said there is no confirmation it always ends up being true. Hopefully this time they are bluffing, but I'm afraid they haven't done so in the past.