For Italian Hostages, a Health Care Ransom
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
LONDON – Italian doctors smuggled four gravely wounded Iraqi insurgents past American checkpoints and secretly treated them in a Baghdad hospital as part of the price to secure the release of two Italian hostages last year, the outgoing head of the Italian Red Cross told a newspaper yesterday.
Sick children of insurgents were also flown to Italy to undergo treatment for leukemia within days of the release of the “Two Simonas” – the aid workers Simona Pari and Simona Torretta – in September last year.
A central figure in the negotiation for the release of several Italian hostages, Maurizio Scelli, caused controversy by disclosing to La Stampa that Italy’s American allies were deliberately kept in the dark about his negotiations with the approval of the Italian government.
“That the Americans should not know was a non-negotiable condition imposed by all my Iraqi interlocutors and mediators,” he explained, saying he had received the approval from a senior official in charge of handling the hostage crisis, Gianni Letta.
As opposition parties demanded that the government answer questions in Parliament, the office of the Italian prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, issued a statement insisting that cooperation with America had always been “frank and loyal” and insisted that Mr. Scelli had acted “in full autonomy.”
At the time of the release of the two women, Mr. Scelli denied all reports that the Italian government had paid a large ransom.
His interview with La Stampa did not say whether cash had changed hands. But he made clear that the Red Cross had offered a type of payment in kind, in the form of “humanitarian” medical assistance.
“The mediators asked us to save the life of four presumed terrorists wanted by the Americans who had been wounded in fighting,” Mr. Scelli told the newspaper.
“The operation was not easy. We had doctors and personnel ready in Baghdad’s hospital, but we had to bring in the wounded without the Americans finding us out.”
Mr. Scelli went on: “There was another condition. We had to treat four of their children who were sick with leukemia and who, if I remember correctly, arrived in Italy the day after the Two Simonas.”
