ROME, Aug 28 (AFP) - Italian newspapers were trying Saturday to pierce the mystery surrounding the execution of Italian journalist Enzo Baldoni in Iraq, with the daily Corriere della Sera suggesting that he might have been killed the day he was kidnapped.
The mass circulation paper, highlighting the contradictory versions of how Baldoni was kidnapped on August 20, said a videotape showing the journalist and containing a threat from his captors to kill him unless Italy withdrew its 3,000 troops in southern Iraq within 48 hours was a fake.
Baldoni, 56, accredited by the Milan weekly Diario, had tried to reach the holy city of Najaf with the aim of obtaining a personal interview with the radical Shiite leader Moqtada Sadr who was then under US military siege.
Initially, the Italian Red Cross said its relief column with which Baldoni had left from Baghdad bound for Najaf had turned back after 50 kilometers (30 miles) because it was too dangerous.
But it now admitted that its convoy had actually come close to Najaf on August 19, but then went to nearby Kufa for an overnight stay before heading back to Baghdad on August 20.
On that day, Baldoni and his Iraqi driver, who were traveling with the Red Cross convoy, were ambushed, the paper said. The Red Cross convoy, in line with security procedures, did not stop but the head of the convoy, Giuseppe De Santis, alerted Iraqi troops at a nearby checkpoint.
Diaro also gave a similar account.
Meanwhile Italians were deeply moved by the courage and dignity shown by Baldoni's widow, Giuly Bonsignore, who, flanked by her two children, 24-year-old Gabriella and 21-year-old Guido, read out a message to the media late Friday.
"Enzo faced life with a smile and we will continue to do it for him. Enzo loved life, he was an inveterate optimist," she said, requesting privacy for her mourning family.
Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi telephoned Bonsignore late Friday to express his sympathy and admiration for the "dignity" shown by her children when they issued an appeal to the kidnappers for the release of their father.
Berlusconi, who had been vacationing in Sardinia, returned to Rome late Friday for talks with Foreign Minister Franco Frattini.
Baldoni is the second Italian hostage to be killed in Iraq. In April, Fabrizio Quattrocchi, one of four private security guards kidnapped near Baghdad, was executed. His murder was filmed on a video released by his abductors.
The three other hostages were released in an operation by coalition forces a month later.