{"id":223,"date":"2004-09-28T22:03:52","date_gmt":"2004-09-29T03:03:52","guid":{"rendered":"\/?p=223"},"modified":"2004-09-28T22:05:36","modified_gmt":"2004-09-29T03:05:36","slug":"female-italian-captives-freed-possibly-ransomed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/targetcentermass.net\/?p=223","title":{"rendered":"Female Italian Captives Freed, Possibly Ransomed"},"content":{"rendered":"

It seems the story of the deaths of two Simonas<\/a> was greatly exaggerated. The pair of Italian women, held hostage since Sept. 7, are now home free<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Two Italian women aid workers held hostage in Iraq for three weeks have returned home to cheers and tears, with Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi leading the welcome party at Rome’s Ciampino airport.<\/p>\n

Simona Pari and Simona Torretta were freed by their Iraqi captors earlier on Tuesday and were immediately whisked by plane back to Italy, where they have unwittingly become national heroines thanks to their ordeal.<\/p>\n

News of their release sparked scenes of joy across the country, while Italian and world leaders breathed a sigh of relief that the crisis had ended without bloodshed.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

When the women were first seized, I posted a handful of possible outcomes<\/a>, including the following:<\/p>\n

The Italian government may have to make some hard choices \u00e2\u20ac\u201c bail out of the war, deal with the scumbags, or stand firm and risk the lives of women, possibly leading to an upheaval on the home front….<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I then concluded that there may end up being no winners and a “quick release is the only way to prevent losses for all involved.”<\/p>\n

Well, it seems that the Italian government did end up having to face those hard choices and, according to the Reuters article, apparently decided on dealing with the Islamist bastards.<\/p>\n

A Kuwaiti daily said earlier on Tuesday the women’s captors had agreed to free them for a $1 million (550,000 pounds) ransom.<\/p>\n

An Italian political source told Reuters a ransom was paid but it was less than $1 million. Berlusconi himself made no mention of a ransom when he announced the release of the two women to parliament.<\/p>\n

He said the secret services had located their whereabouts earlier this week, but rather than risk using violence to secure their release, the Italian government had preferred to negotiate.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Italy bought temporary peace at home and secured a far better deal than the Philippines managed in their $6 million wimp-out<\/a>. One has to ask, though, at what future price? How many deaths can be financed with this ransom?<\/p>\n

Italy is still in the game, but they just handed a lot of chips to the bad guys playing by a different, ruthless set of rules.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It seems the story of the deaths of two Simonas was greatly exaggerated. The pair of Italian women, held hostage since Sept. 7, are now home free. Two Italian women aid workers held hostage in Iraq for three weeks have returned home to cheers and tears, with Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi leading the welcome party […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,1,6,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-223","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-europe","category-general","category-middle-east","category-war-on-terror"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/targetcentermass.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/targetcentermass.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/targetcentermass.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/targetcentermass.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/targetcentermass.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=223"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/targetcentermass.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/targetcentermass.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=223"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/targetcentermass.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=223"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/targetcentermass.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=223"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}