FYI: Who Seized Simona Torretta?

[Ivo Skoric]

This is yet another disgusting possibility. I would really like to
hear that the U.S. is not somehow involved in this terrorist act. And
if it gets proven that it is, then Rummy really needs to get lost.
ivo
------- Forwarded message follows -------
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0916-11.htm

Published on Thursday, September 16, 2004 by the Guardian/UK
[http://www.guardian.co.uk/guardian/]

Who Seized Simona Torretta?
This Iraqi Kidnapping has the Mark of an Undercover Police Operation

by Naomi Klein and Jeremy Scahill

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
[http://www.unponteper.it/en/]. 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
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. 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.

· Jeremy Scahill is a reporter for the independent US radio/TV show
Democracy Now [http://www.democracynow.org/); Naomi Klein is the
author of No Logo and Fences and Windows

Caption of accompanying illustration (not attached):
Simona Torretta (R) poses with Iraqi Safanah, head of the Baghdad
office of "Un Ponte Per Baghdad". (AFP/File/Mario Laporta)