Italians Fall out of Love with ‘Two Simonas’

The words and actions of the two recently-released Italian hostages have quickly splintered a fawning Italian public.

Italy’s adoration of the “two Simonas”, the women aid workers abducted in Iraq, began to sour yesterday, as the extent of their sympathy for the Iraqi fight against the allied occupation became clear.

In their first big interviews given since their release in return for a reported $1 million ransom on Tuesday, Simona Pari and Simona Torretta, both 29, gave their backing to insurgents opposing the allied forces.

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[Pari said,] “If you ask me about terrorism, I’ll tell you that there is terrorism and there is resistance. The resistance struggle of people against an occupying force is guaranteed by international law.”

The women’s comments are likely to cause renewed anger in government circles, following their call soon after their release for Italy’s peacekeeping forces to be withdrawn.

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After they were taken hostage on Sept 7, the two Simonas achieved iconic status in Italy and the conservative government and the opposition put aside their differences to work together for the women’s release.

But as the Turin newspaper La Stampa said yesterday, national unity has been short lived since their arrival home, wearing kaftans and thanking their captors in Arabic for their release before the cameras of the Al-Jazeera stellite television network.

When these two were first seized, I pointed out that an al-Jazeera article showed that these two had been specifically targeted. The reason was not immediately obvious. It now is — the terrorists knew they were potentially valuable as mouthpieces for Islamist villainy. Shrewd … and accurate.