23-year-old worker kidnapped and freed in Bologna: three arrests, €26,000 ransom paid
Bologna's Mobile Squad has freed a young man held hostage and arrested three alleged kidnappers. The abduction was linked to a debt of €16,000, possibly connected to drug trafficking.
Kidnapping in Bologna: worker freed, three detained after negotiations with abductors
Google News IT — Crime reports that the State Police in Bologna has freed a 23-year-old worker held hostage and arrested three alleged kidnappers, following an operation by the Mobile Squad coordinated by the Public Prosecutor's Office and the Juvenile Court.
The night of the abduction
In the late evening of 1 September, the girlfriend and a friend of the twenty-three-year-old, a resident in the province of Bologna, contacted police after failing to reach him. Communications with the young man were cut off and then resumed only through applications difficult to intercept, at the explicit request of the abductors.
During night-time contacts, the boy told a friend that he had been forcibly loaded onto a vehicle, tied at the wrists with cable ties and beaten, before being taken to a farmhouse "in the middle of the woods". The kidnappers demanded €26,000 in cash for his release.
Negotiations and the raid in San Lazzaro
Initial investigations focused on the San Lazzaro di Savena area. After elaborate negotiations, the abductors insisted that a rucksack containing the ransom money be abandoned in open countryside. However, officers from the Mobile Squad had set up extensive surveillance measures at the location.
The operation made it possible to immediately locate the victim, who was at that moment being transported by car by one of the alleged kidnappers: this individual was stopped and arrested on the spot. Subsequent activities, which continued uninterruptedly throughout the day, made it possible to locate and arrest the two alleged accomplices.
Who the detainees are
All those arrested are very young: a boy born in 2003 of Moldovan origin, another born in 2006 of Italian nationality, and a minor. The victim, also struck with a machete — which fortunately was used with the blunt side — sustained injuries deemed to require 31 days to heal.
Drug debts at the root of the kidnapping
According to investigations, the 23-year-old had accumulated a debt of approximately €16,000 in a short time to one of his abductors, a peer of Moldovan origin. Police do not rule out that this sum may be traceable to unpaid consignments of narcotics. The gang allegedly decided to carry out the kidnapping in order to recover the money.
Inquiries coordinated by the Public Prosecutor's Office — including the Anti-Mafia Division — and the Juvenile Court are ongoing to clarify the context in which the crime occurred, reasonably attributable to environments connected to the trafficking and consumption of illegal substances.
The investigative details of the operation were illustrated during a press conference at Bologna Police Headquarters, attended by Guglielmo Battisti, head of the Mobile Squad, and Michele D'Alonzo, head of the organised crime division.
Source: Google News IT — Crime (it)