Italian Hostage’s Release Erupts Into Clashes Over Islam and Ransom

ROME: After news broke last weekend that a kidnapped 24-year-old Italian aid worker had been released after 18 months in captivity in Africa, Italians were overjoyed after weeks of relentlessly gloomy coronavirus-driven news.

But from the moment she stepped off an Italian government plane on Sunday wearing a green jilbab — the full-length outer garment worn by some Muslim women — her welcome home became decidedly chillier, and even outright hostile. 

The conversion of the young woman, Silvia Romano, to Islam, along with rumors that Italy had paid a ransom for her release, opened the dam to a deluge of insults on social media. 

She has also been met with threats, in an episode that has focused renewed attention on the anti-immigrant and anti-Islam commentary unleashed in Italy during the 15 months that Matteo Salvini, the leader of the League Party, served as the country’s interior minister until he was ousted last fall. 

Since Monday, the police have been patrolling the Milan street where Ms. Romano lives, and a Milan prosecutor has opened an investigation into the onslaught of threatening messages directed toward her on social media. Supporters said it was as if she had been freed by her kidnappers only to be held hostage — in her home — by Italian haters.

For her part, Ms. Romano, who has not spoken publicly since her return, reached out on her private Facebook page on Thursday. “I ask you not to get mad to defend me. 

The worst has passed for me,” she wrote in a post visible only to friends. “I always followed my heart and it will never betray me.” 

Ms. Romano, whose release reportedly occurred last Friday, was kidnapped in November 2018 in the Kenyan city of Chakama, near the town where she was volunteering with Africa Milele, an Italian aid organization whose name includes the Swahili word for “forever.”

Few months ago a daughter of the member of the Parliament has also converted to Islam. 

Source : NYTimes