Roma (Caasimada Online) – A young Italian woman who was kidnapped by unknown gunmen from Kenya while volunteering as an aid worker has finally landed in Rome on Sunday a day after being released.
A plane carrying Silvia Romano and other government officials has on Sunday touched down Rome’s Ciampino airport at about 2 p.m. (1200 GMT).
Romano, accompanied by several masked men from the intelligence service, was given an arousing welcome by high ranking officials including Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte and Di Maio who greeted her.
Prime Minister Conte hailed efforts by the task force, the judiciary, the defense and foreign ministries who took part in the release of the young lady.
“We are so glad to welcome Silvia back in such a delicate moment for the country. The State is always there, and will always be there,” Conte said.
Silvia Romano was working for an Italian charity called Africa Milele in Kilifi Kenya before the terrible incident occurred.
Reports said that after her kidnapping, Ms. Romano ended up in the hands of militants linked to Somalia’s al-Shabab Islamic extremists.
Al-Shabab has been blamed for a series of kidnappings of foreigners along Kenya’s coast. Kenya said the abductions of four foreigners prompted it to send troops to Somalia in 2011 to fight al-Shabab members.
In 2011, a British man was shot dead and his wife kidnapped from a resort island, while weeks later a French woman was taken from her home on the Lamu archipelago.
Soon afterward Al-Shabaab gunmen abducted two Spanish aid workers from the Dadaab refugee camp close to the Somali border in the only confirmed case of kidnapping inside Kenya by the jihadists.
In April 2019, two Cuban doctors were kidnapped in northeastern Kenya and whisked to Somalia before $1.5 million (1.35 million euros) was demanded for their release.
Kenyan police sources said the kidnapping bore the hallmarks of Al-Shabaab, a militant outfit that has been waging an insurgency against Somalia’s foreign-backed government for over a decade.
source https://www.caasimada.net/freed-italian-aid-worker-returns-home-from-somalia/
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