Guardian: Who seized Simona Torretta?

[muriel_volestrangler]

This Iraqi kidnapping has the mark of an undercover police operation

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1305523,00.html

Nothing about this kidnapping fits the pattern of other abductions. Most are opportunistic attacks on treacherous stretches of road. Torretta and her colleagues were coldly hunted down in their home. And while mujahideen in Iraq scrupulously hide their identities, making sure to wrap their faces in scarves, these kidnappers were bare-faced and clean-shaven, some in business suits. One assailant was addressed by the others as "sir".

Kidnap victims have overwhelmingly been men, yet three of these four are women. Witnesses say the gunmen questioned staff in the building until the Simonas were identified by name, and that Mahnouz Bassam, an Iraqi woman, was dragged screaming by her headscarf, a shocking religious transgression for an attack supposedly carried out in the name of Islam.

Most extraordinary was the size of the operation: rather than the usual three or four fighters, 20 armed men pulled up to the house in broad daylight, seemingly unconcerned about being caught. Only blocks from the heavily patrolled Green Zone, the whole operation went off with no interference from Iraqi police or US military - although Newsweek reported that "about 15 minutes afterwards, an American Humvee convoy passed hardly a block away".
...
A Bridge to Baghdad has been unapologetic in its opposition to the occupation regime. During the siege of Falluja in April, it coordinated risky humanitarian missions. US forces had sealed the road to Falluja and banished the press as they prepared to punish the entire city for the gruesome killings of four Blackwater mercenaries. In August, when US marines laid siege to Najaf, A Bridge to Baghdad again went where the occupation forces wanted no witnesses. And the day before their kidnapping, Torretta and Pari told Kubaisi that they were planning yet another high-risk mission to Falluja.

Jeremy Scahill is a reporter for the independent US radio/TV show Democracy Now; Naomi Klein is the author of No Logo and Fences and Windows

[hedda_foil]

1. The answer seems clear.

It damn well sounds like the work of "our" guys.

[CHIMO]

2. The Story Behind the Bridge To Baghdad Abduction

JEREMY SCAHILL: According to an Iraqi journalist who witnessed the scene, happened to be in the area, the whole thing took less than five minutes. The abduction. Some say ten minutes. What's interesting is Newsweek and others reported -- they quoted eyewitnesses saying that there was one man that was in charge, a clean-shaven man in a gray suit who the others referred to as “Sir.” I think that we don't know who took these women, but the point is that there are people who know who have these women, and we cannot rule out the possibility that it was not an Iraqi resistance group. This hurts the Iraqi resistance tremendously, and you always have to ask who benefits in cases like this.


http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/09/16/147249

[Barrett808]

3. Nascent Negroponte death squads?

Just a thought.