«I found my daughter thanks to a guardian angel. An unknown person who sent us the exact location where Noemi was.” Filippo Zanella, 47 years old, originally from Cesena, tells his incredible story to Corriere della Sera. In 2021 the little girl, who was six years old at the time, disappeared after leaving for Poland with her mother, the 47-year-old’s ex-partner. Zanella, having no longer heard from them, had left for Warsaw to go and look for her in person. A de facto kidnapping, perhaps carried out by his ex-partner of whom, among other things, there are no traces to date. In recent weeks Zanella was joined in Poland by his mother, the little girl’s grandmother. Then on June 5th the turning point: a message delivered by an unknown sender reported Noemi on the border with Belarus and Ukraine. The little girl, who is now 9 years old, is doing well. In the next few hours she is expected in Cesena with her father and grandmother.
The sentences in The Hague, the anonymous message and the local police who did not help the man
In recent weeks, Zanella’s mother, Noemi’s grandmother, had also arrived in Poland and, on the morning of Wednesday 5 June, the turning point came with the anonymous message. Yes, because the guy from Romagna doesn’t know who sent that location. He calls him a “guardian angel”, he would like to thank him. Just like him, he doesn’t actually know what happened to his ex-partner, who vanished into thin air. Noemi, explains Il Corriere, was formally protected by a European protection order while the juvenile court in The Hague expressed itself with two sentences: the first imposed the immediate return of the child to her mother who had witnessed the reading of the same sentence. The second reiterated the provision, which however her mother ignored. For this reason, Zanella decided to leave his physiotherapist practice in Cesena to go to Poland in person. «In these two months – she said – I toured the country far and wide, covering 5000 kilometres. Now I have been to Warsaw, but I have also filmed in much smaller municipalities.” She went around schools and doctors’ surgeries, without her, she reiterates “no help” from the police. «I spoke to many of her family members, including close ones (of her ex-partner) – said Zanella – but here in Poland the relatives of criminals benefit from a law that allows them not to speak about it in compliance with their protection. Bottom line, no one told me anything.” The Polish police did not help Zanella, who specifies: “If we found Noemi it is only thanks to this unknown person.” «I want to express all the satisfaction of the city of Cesena and we are ready to help Filippo in all the procedures, from Noemi’s identity documents to inclusion in the summer camps», declared the mayor of Cesena Enzo Lattuca who is waiting for his grandmother’s return, of the father and the little girl.
(cover photo Filippo Zanella / Facebook)
