TWO Italian women aid workers kidnapped in Iraq were freed last year as the result of a deal in which four presumed Iraqi terrorists received life-saving treatment at the Italian hospital in Baghdad, a senior Red Cross official said yesterday.

Maurizio Scelli, the outgoing chief of the Italian Red Cross, said that the deal to free Simona Pari and Simona Torretta was kept secret from American officials in Iraq.

His disclosure prompted a furious denial from the Italian Government. It also provoked outrage from those who had negotiated unsuccessfully for the release of British hostages and who had been told by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office that no deals would be countenanced.

“The mediators asked us to treat and save the lives of four presumed terrorists sought by the Americans, wounded in combat,” Signor Scelli said.

“We hid them and brought them to the doctors with the Red Cross, who operated on them. We also treated four of their children, who were ill with leukaemia.”

Signor Scelli did not name the four men, but referred to them as terrorists and presumed terrorists. He said that the Italians had evaded two

US checkpoints by hiding the wanted men in a Jeep and an ambulance. He said that the men — three of them badly wounded — were “treated and saved by doctors of the Red Cross”.

The decision to keep US officials in the dark was approved by Gianni Letta, a senior aide to Silvio Berlusconi, the Prime Minister, Signor Scelli said. Signor Letta had told him that nobody should know about it. “Keeping the Americans in the dark was a non-negotiable condition to guarantee the safety of the hostages and ourselves.”

Signor Berlusconi’s office said that the Government had not been party to any such deal and that Signor Scelli was referring to actions undertaken independently by the Italian Red Cross. In a later television interview Signor Scelli said that the Government had been involved only informally. He also said that he did not know if those treated were terrorists, declaring: “To me they were just Iraqis”.

The Foreign Office said last night that Britain made no apology for refusing to pay ransoms to free its hostages in Iraq, or anywhere else.

Margaret Hassan, an aid worker who had lived in Iraq for 30 years, and Kenneth Bigley, a Liverpool-born engineer, were murdered within weeks of each other last year after the Government ordered negotiators to turn down deals from the separate kidnap groups.

The gunmen who ambushed Mrs Hassan are believed to have abducted her for money, but handed her on to a militant group when negotiations stalled after the British Government urged her employers not to offer any ransom. Paul Bigley claims that the gunmen who seized his brother at his rented Baghdad villa had asked for a ransom.

A senior British diplomat who worked in Iraq said last night that he was appalled at the Italian authorities for sanctioning any sort of deal with the kidnappers.

He added: “The Italians will argue they saved their two hostages. Our view is that it encourages these groups to seize more and more Westerners.”

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