Italy probes kidnapping

2005-02-06 08:21

Rome - Italy is investigating whether an Italian journalist abducted in Iraq was seized by insurgents or by ordinary criminals hoping for a ransom, a top foreign ministry official said Sunday.

Italian officials, meanwhile, publicised the journalist's pacifist convictions in hopes it might help win her release.

Giuliana Sgrena, a 56-year-old reporter for the left-wing daily Il Manifesto, was kidnapped on Friday by gunmen who blocked her car outside Baghdad University.

"We need a lot of patience to try to understand the motives of the kidnappers," undersecretary for foreign affairs Alfredo Mantica told Italian state radio RAI.

He spoke from Kuwait, where he met on Saturday with the foreign minister and head of parliament there to enlist their help in the investigation.

The first step is "trying to figure out if the kidnapping was a political one, or if it was done by a band of common criminals looking for ransom", Mantica said.

Foreign minister Gianfranco Fini highlighted Sgrena's pacifist convictions in remarks to Al-Jazeera television broadcast on Saturday.

"As I said, the issue has to do with a woman who loves peace and who is a friend of the Iraqi people," Fini told the Qatar-based network in a telephone interview.

Wants Italian troops to withdraw

Several Italian officials have expressed the hope that Sgrena's personal views and her newspaper's strong stance against the Iraq war could aid in her release.

"We hope that the kidnapping is of a political kind. If it is a political kidnapping, the kidnappers will discover that the journalist is one of those who always sustained their own reasoning," interior minister Giuseppe Pisanu said in comments published on Saturday by Italian newspaper La Stampa.

Il Manifesto strongly opposed the US-led conflict in Iraq and has fiercely criticised premier Silvio Berlusconi's support and his decision to deploy 3 000 troops in Iraq after the ouster of Saddam Hussein.

Sgrena was kidnapped after spending three hours in the al-Moustafa mosque compound interviewing refugees who escaped a US-led assault on Fallujah last year.

As Sgrena, her driver and translator were leaving Baghdad's university campus, which houses the mosque, their car was blocked by two vehicles carrying eight gunmen, the translator said. The translator and driver escaped, but the gunmen drove away with Sgrena, he said.

A statement posted on two Islamic militant websites in the name of the little-known Islamic Jihad Organisation claimed responsibility for the kidnapping and gave Italy 72 hours to withdraw its troops from Iraq. It did not say what would happen otherwise.

The statement did not include a picture of the victim or other evidence that the claim was genuine. The Italian foreign ministry said it was sceptical.

- AP