Awni al-Kalemji: Withdraw troops, release Italian girls
Dear journalists,
With regard to your question on my personal opinion about the two Italian hostages I would like to state the following:
According to my information the Iraqi Resistance opposes any action which does not serve the liberation of Iraq from occupation. We have heard and seen that the Resistance released several hostages of different nationalities after their innocence had been proved. Among them are the three Italians who were set free only some months ago. Furthermore I believe that nobody except the Resistance itself can judge the background of the foreigners in Iraq.
From the south to the north Iraq is a battlefield. There is no centimeter in peace. Those coming to Iraq as tourists in most cases are no real tourists. Neither are they journalists searching for the truth. Unfortunately in most of the cases they offer their services to the occupation. They work with the occupation and try to cover their real face by posing as professionals etc. They basically follow their financial interests and thus serve as instrument of the occupation. Therefore the Iraq Resistance has to treat the hostages as Prisoners of War according to international law.
Furthermore I do not believe that all hostage-taking has been performed by the Resistance. There are more than 20,000 people in Iraq who had been brought in by the occupation force. They are being paid to attack civilian targets and thus to destroy the reputation of the resistance.
In any case I continue to support the Resistance with my publications and activities hoping that they will cautiously treat the complicated problem of the two Italian girls. I have 100% trust in my sources of information and especially my friends Moreno Pasquinelli who assure me that the two girls have nothing to do with the occupation. Therefore I advocate that they should be immediately released as I publicly stated two days ago.
However, the Italian prime minister bears the full responsibility for the participation of his county in the aggression against Iraq – only to please Bush junior. Why he does not withdraw his troops as several counties already did, especially after it turned out that all the alleged reasons for the war were lies? I ask you as journalists: Why you do not demand from the aggressors to withdraw their troops from Iraq after it has been proved that Iraq did neither possess arms of mass destruction nor had any links to al-Qaida?
Iraq could threat nobody. The claim that Iraq could destroy Washington or any European capital by nuclear bombs within 45 minutes is completely ridiculous. Why we do not hear one single word of your about the scores of innocent Iraqi victims being killed every day by US military action? Or do you believe that Iraqi blood values less that American or Italian?
I hope that the two hostages will be released as soon as their innocence is proved. I believe in the justice of the decisions of the Resistance as well as in the correctness of the information of the Italian friends.
Awni al-Kalemji
September 12, 2004
