Italian Hostages Released

In Iraq, seven kidnapped hostages including two Italian women abducted three weeks ago have now been released. In the case of the Italian women Italy’s President Berlusconi won’t say whether there was a ransom or some other quid pro quo. Is there any question in your mind? There isn’t in mine.

Another recently released hostage, a Canadian, is reporting something very ominous.

Scott Taylor

Canadian Journalist Scott Taylor spent five days as a kidnapped hostage in Iraq. He was “tortured and beaten” and “also told I was going to die. They were going to behead me on Friday.” He said he can barely walk because of the beatings he endured.

Scott Taylor, Canadian Journalist and Former Hostage in Iraq tells his story:
“They pronounced that I would be executed the following morning and I was handcuffed and chained to the bed and I laid there for about 6 or 7 hours just anticipating my own death. “

But what’s most chilling about Taylor’s story is what he’d already learned by then. From the moment of his capture as he and a Turkish journalist approached an Iraqi police checkpoint outside the city of Talafar.

TAYLOR: “We were instructed to get into a car with four masked gunmen, this is by the Iraqi police, and the masked gunmen were sitting next to the checkpoint.”

The Iraqi police, mind you, are the ones we’re counting on to provide security for the January elections. BY then it’s hoped there’ll be 145 thousand of them. But as his kidnappers were driving their hostages to Mosul, they encountered MORE Iraqi police. And guess what?

TAYLOR: “They actually welcomed these guys like you would welcome home the local baseball team after a game. These were obviously about 30 heavily armed mujahideen coming in dusty cars across the desert with captives, evident captives, myself and the Turkish journalist, inside the car. They were giving them cigarettes, giving them water.”

Taylor says this wasn’t just garden variety police corruption.

TAYLOR: “This wasn’t something where these guys were just paying protection and turning a blind eye. They were actually willingly encouraging the mujahideen in their fight against the American occupiers: And they were LAUGHING.” says Taylor.

TAYLOR: “They were laughing about this because it meant that in fact the munitions they were purchasing for the resistance were in fact being bought with American money that was intended for the salaries of the Iraqi police and army that were supposed to be combating the resistance, so they found this rather ironic.”

Don’t YOU find that troubling? I do.