Posted on 09/29/2004 1:54:28 PM PDT by rface
ROME, Sept 29 (AFP):One of two Italian women released after three weeks captivity in Iraq said she was ready to go back to the war-wracked country to continue her aid work, and told of being given sweets by her kidnappers as a farewell gift.
"I would do it all over again with all the consequences that that carries even though I'm sorry for all the suffering my mother went through and didn't deserve," Simona Torretta told reporters late Tuesday after she and Simona Pari, both 29, were released by their Iraqi kidnappers and flown back to Rome.
Both women worked for "A Bridge to Baghdad" an Iraq-based Italian non-governmental organisation. The Italian government reportedly paid a one-million-dollar ransom for the Italian women's release.
Two Iraqi aid workers captured with them were also released as were four Egyptians taken in a separate kidnapping.
Torretta said she and Pari had been treated "well and with a lot of respect" during their captivity. "We'll see but probably, yes, I will return," she said. "But for now I must be close to my family." Torretta and Pari wore long tunics embroidered with flowers commonly worn by women in the Middle East as they stepped off the plane in Rome to be greeted by overjoyed family members and politicians. They smiled and appeared in good health.
Torretta was seen holding on to a package that contained sweets she said her kidnappers had given her upon her release.
According to Maurizio Scelli, the head of the Italian Red Cross who accompanied the women from Baghdad, they told him they had been held together in a room but were not blindfolded or tied up.
Torretta said although their three weeks of captivity were difficult, they knew they would be released. Scelli said the women believed they were held in Baghdad though they did not know the exact location and had been moved several times.
He said the kidnappers drove them around in a car for hours before releasing them.
Pari, whose family lives in Rimini, on the Adriatic coast, arrived in her hometown overnight accompanied by her parents, her brother and the town mayor.
"Everything went well, very well," her mother Donatella told reporters.
Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, who greeted the two women on their arrival in Rome, later was seen at the capital's famous Tre Scalini cafe drinking a glass of champagne and eating ice cream to celebrate their release and his 68th birthday Wednesday.
Meanwhile: Italians Wednesday the release of two female aid workers who had been held hostage in Iraq with the country's two leading newspapers expressing the relief felt nationwide with the headline "They're Home" alongside pictures of the two smiling women.
"It has been a long time since Italy enjoyed a true and spontaneous feeling of joy, capable of uniting the entire nation," said the leading daily Corriere della Sera in an editorial.
Maybe she got a cut of the ransom, too?
"Torretta said she and Pari had been treated "well and with a lot of respect" ..."
Except of course for the fact that they were KIDNAPPED!
Appears to me they should get together with Patti Hearst. They have a lot in common, doncha think?
The Italian government reportedly paid a one-million-dollar ransom for the Italian women's release.
How much does it cost for the islamo scum in Iraq to build roadside bombs? AKs? RPGs?
And if your government didn't pay the $5 million ransom? Then how were you treated?
Yahoo reporting $5 million now. But who really knows.
She has to post her own ransom next time.../s
Happy Birthday, Silvio!
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