An Italian hostage kidnapped in Libya in July has been released, Italian Foreign Minister Paolo Gentiloni said on Thursday.
The minister said in the early hours of Thursday that Marco Vallisa, a 54-year-old technician from a town near the northern Italian city of Piacenza, is "now on a flight to Italy".
Vallisa was in Libya working on a construction site for the Modenese company Piacentini Construzioni when he was kidnapped July 5 in the coastal city of Zuara along with two other colleagues, Petar Matic, a Bosnian, and Emilio Garfuri, from Macedonia. Matic and Garfuri were released two days after their capture. The disappearance of the three men was immediately believed to be a kidnapping, partly because the car they were travelling in was found with the keys in the ignition. The kidnappers may have wanted a ransom. The hypothesis of a politically motivated kidnapping was seen as less likely as the incident took place away from Cyrenaica, where jihadist rebels, at war with the authorities Tripoli, are concentrated.
"I express my deep satisfaction at the release of Marco Vallisa," said Gentiloni.
"I want to warmly thank all those who have worked for the happy ending of this affair. This outcome is fruit of teamwork between the foreign ministry's crisis unit, our intelligence services and the Italian embassy in Tripoli. "I want to express my deepest appreciation for the dedication and professionalism and for the effective and patient action. "A special thanks goes to the Vallisa family for their confidence in the work of our institutions".
There are still five Italians kidnapped abroad: Vanessa Marullo and Greta Ramelli, aid workers who were seized in Syria July 31; the Venetian technician Gianluca Salviato, kidnapped in Libya on March 22; the Jesuit priest from Rome Father Paolo Dall'Oglio, taken at the end of July 2013 in Syria; and Giovanni Lo Porto, an aid worker and a native of Palermo, who disappeared January 19, 2012, between Pakistan and Afghanistan.
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