Italians March to Free Hostages, as Ordered

Waving rainbow-striped flags for peace, people from across the country marched to the front steps of the Vatican on Thursday to show solidarity with three Italian men taken hostage in Iraq -- just days after the Iraqi captors ordered that they do so.

In a video shown Monday on Arabic-language satellite television, the abductors demanded that Italians rise up in protest against their government’s decision to maintain troops in Iraq. In exchange, the militants said, they would spare the hostages’ lives. The statement came with a deadline of five days.

Some Italians -- including members of the government and most of the opposition -- charged that staging the march would be caving in to blackmail. They stayed away.

But others, led by the families of the captured men and backed by Pope John Paul II, insisted that any gesture was worth making. A fourth Italian seized along with the three on April 12 has been executed by the captors.

“If we do not do this, perhaps it will be too late,” Angelo Stefio, the father of one hostage, told reporters at the start of the demonstration.

Organizers sought to keep politics out of the march. Several thousand people walked in relative silence from the Castel Sant’Angelo, onetime hiding place of medieval popes, over the Tiber River and down the Via della Conciliazione to St. Peter’s Basilica. But toward the end, some erupted in chants against the war and Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.

In an unusual move, the marchers were allowed to file into the square in front of St. Peter’s. Demonstrations ordinarily are not permitted inside the Vatican city-state. There the marchers were greeted by bishops from the hometowns of the three hostages and heard a message from the pope, read by a senior Vatican official, imploring the men to be strong and urging their release.

“In the name of the one God who will judge all of us, John Paul II renews his pressing appeal to the kidnappers to allow the hostages to return to their families,” the Vatican’s foreign minister, Msgr. Giovanni Lajolo, said. He added that the pope said a private Mass for the men earlier in the day.

Numerous politicians, mostly from the Greens and leftist parties, joined the demonstration in what they said was a personal decision. There were no party banners or slogans.

“I’m here to show solidarity,” said leftist Sen. Tana de Zulueta.

But Francesco Rutelli, head of the main center-left opposition coalition, said politicians “risk being seen as having complied with the kidnappers’ demands” by participating.

The march, which was much smaller than demonstrations here against the Iraq war, apparently was shown to the Arab world by satellite TV.

Thursday’s event was the latest example of the very public way Italians are reacting to the hostage taking. Every day, newspapers dedicate pages of coverage to the men and Italy’s role in Iraq. Parliament routinely debates the deteriorating conditions in Iraq and the risks faced by Italian troops.

In the tape aired Monday on satellite channel Al Arabiya, in which the captors called Berlusconi a lackey of the Bush administration, the three Italians -- Salvatore Stefio, Umberto Cupertino and Maurizio Agliana -- were shown seated, dressed in Arab garb and eating with their fingers. They sported days-old beards and looked somber, but said they were being treated well.

They were captured, along with Fabrizio Quattrocchi, between Baghdad and Fallouja during a rash of kidnappings that terrorized Westerners and Japanese in Iraq. The Italians worked for a private U.S. security firm as guards.

Quattrocchi was shot to death two days later. His death was videotaped and the tape was delivered to Al Jazeera, which chose not to air it, saying the images were too grisly.

Berlusconi said his government was doing everything possible to free the men but would not “negotiate with terrorists.” Continental Europe’s most vocal U.S. ally, he repeatedly has refused to consider withdrawing 2,700 Italian troops from Iraq. “If we pull out, there will be a civil war,” Berlusconi said this week.