Reggio Emilia At 17 she was taken from her family, seized in a farmhouse in the Reggio Emilia countryside and raped by unscrupulous human traffickers who wanted a ransom. The nightmare experienced by a Syrian minor also passed through the province of Reggio Emilia, and in particular through a farmhouse that the girl was unable, in her story, to locate with greater precision.
Now, a year after the events, the Lodi police headquarters – where the 17-year-old was abandoned in a service station – coordinated by District Anti-Mafia Directorate of Bologna identified the perpetrators, who ended up in handcuffs after being stopped by the Croatian police while they were transporting seven other illegal immigrants into a car. A Pakistani and an Afghan are accused of kidnapping for the purpose of extortion, sexual violence, injury and aiding and abetting illegal immigration. The accomplice, an Albanian woman, is wanted.
The minor was found in May last year in the parking lot of a petrol station in Lodi: he had a broken arm and was in shock. The girl had told a terrible story. Fleeing Syria with her parents, brother and grandmother, she ends up hostage to unscrupulous human traffickers who separate her from her family to extort a ransom, beaten, raped and abandoned.
The Syrian family, fleeing the war, takes refuge in Turkey but the earthquake of February 2023 forces them to rely on traffickers to head to Germany. A well-organized clandestine escape, crossing several countries: from Türkiye to Slovenia, then to Northern Italy. The two men now arrested are managing the trip. After crossing the Italian border, the family is divided: the father and brother are abandoned in a lay-by on the motorway in the province of Udine, while the girl, mother and grandmother, in another car, are taken to a town in the province of Reggio Emilia. From here the minor, under a pretext, is removed and taken to another house. The kidnapping takes place: the girl is forced to call her father asking him to pay the kidnappers money for her release. Abused and beaten by one of the traffickers, after paying the ransom the 17 year old was released in Lodi.
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