Who seized Simona Torretta? - Naomi Klein and Jeremy Scahill

[Gennaro Scala <gennarolasca at yahoo.it>]

Who seized Simona Torretta? 

This Iraqi kidnapping has the mark of an undercover
police operation 

Naomi Klein and Jeremy Scahill
Thursday September 16, 2004
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1305624,00.html

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. 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.


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 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 AK-47s, 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; Naomi Klein is the author
of No Logo and Fences and Windows 

jeremy at democracynow.org 

www.nologo.org 




                
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