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Italy denies paying $4m ransom to Syrians

The Italian foreign ministry on Friday denied paying a $4 million (€2.9 million) ransom to kidnappers in Syria to secure the release of journalist Domenico Quirico, following a report in a US magazine.

Published: 17 January 2014 14:20 CET

Italy denies paying $4m ransom to Syrians

Domenico Quirico was set free five months after being kidnapped in Syria. Photo: Andreas Solaro/AFP

In an interview with Foreign Policy magazine, a man claiming to be a hostage negotiator said he hand delivered the cash in order to free Quirico and Belgian teacher Pierre Piccinin last September.

But today Italy’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs denied the claim. “No ransom was paid for the release of Italian Domenico Quirico,” spokesman Niccolò Fontana told The Local.

READ MORE: Italy paid $4 million to Syrian kidnappers: report

The official response stands in stark contrast to the claims made by Motaz Shaklab, described as a member of the opposition Syrian National Council.

Shaklab said he was contacted by a friend to locate the Europeans after they were kidnapped in April, spending three months negotiating between the group holding the pair and the Italian authorities.

After settling on the $4 million fee, Shaklab reportedly flew to Lebanon where he was met by an Italian. The two then travelled to the Syrian border where the cash was delivered, securing the release of Quirico and Piccinin four days later, Foreign Policy said.

Quirico was flown to Rome after his release and subsequently published an account of his 152-day ordeal, in which he said he was subjected to mock executions and twice tried to escape.

READ MORE: Italian faced 'mock executions' in Syria

Reports of the alleged ransom payment come the same week the Italian government agreed to host a transfer of Syria’s chemical weapons next month.

The Calabrian port of Gioia Tauro, in southern Italy, will host the February operation, during which 500 tonnes of Syria’s deadly chemicals will be moved from a Danish ship to a US vessel.

The transfer is part of a UN-backed to remove the weapons from the war-ravaged country, nearly three years into a conflict in which more than 100,000 people have been killed.

READ MORE: Calabrian port to host Syria chemical transfer

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Syrian refugee Bilal Alkale and his daughter Rawan at their home in Lundby, Denmark on November 17th 2021.

Syrian refugee Bilal Alkale and his daughter Rawan at their home in Lundby, Denmark on November 17th 2021. Photo: Thibault Savary / AFP

Alkale, who until recently ran his own small transportation company in Denmark, found out in March he wasn’t allowed to stay in the Scandinavian country where he has lived as a refugee since 2014, as Copenhagen now considers it safe for Syrians to return to Damascus.

His wife and three of his four children were also affected by the decision taken by Danish authorities.

Once the ruling was confirmed on appeal in late September — like 40 percent of some 200 other cases examined so far — Alkale and his family were ordered to leave.

READ ALSO: Danish refugee board overturns decisions to send home Syrians

They were told that if they didn’t go voluntarily, they would be placed in a detention centre.

The family has refused to leave.

Normally they would have been deported by now, but since Copenhagen has no diplomatic relations with Damascus, they can’t be. And so they wait.

Days and weeks go by without any news from the authorities.

In the meantime, the family has been stripped of their rights in Denmark.

Alkale can’t sleep, his eyes riveted on his phone as he keeps checking his messages.

“What will become of me now?” the 51-year-old asks.

“Everything is off. The kids aren’t going to school, and I don’t have work,” he says, the despair visible on his weary face as he sits in the living room of the home he refurbished himself in the small village of Lundby, an hour-and-a-half’s drive south of Copenhagen.

“All this so people will get annoyed enough to leave Denmark.”

For him, returning to Syria means certain death.

“I can’t go back, I’m wanted,” he tells AFP.

And yet, he has no way to earn a living here.

“As a foreigner staying illegally in Denmark, your rights are very limited,” notes his lawyer Niels-Erik Hansen, who has applied for new residency permits for the family.

In mid-2020, Denmark became the first European Union country to re-examine the cases of about 500 Syrians from Damascus, which is under the control of Bashar al-Assad’s regime, saying “the current situation in Damascus is no longer such as to justify a residence permit or the extension of a residence permit”.

The decision was later widened to include the neighbouring region of Rif Dimashq.

Despite a wave of Danish and international criticism, the Social Democratic government — which has pursued one of Europe’s toughest immigration policies — has refused to budge.

READ ALSO:

The Alkale family is considering leaving for another European country, even though they risk being sent back to Denmark.

Alkale’s oldest child was already over the age of 18 when they arrived in Denmark and therefore has her own residency permit, currently under review.

Of the three other children, only the youngest, 10-year-old Rawan, still has the carefree ways of a child.

Majed, 14, says he’s “bummed”, while Said, 17, who was studying to prepare for professional chef school, says he now has no idea what his future holds.

Only a handful of Syrians have so far been placed in detention centres, regularly criticised for poor sanitary conditions.

Asmaa al-Natour and her husband Omar are among the few.

They live in the Sjælsmark camp, a former army barracks surrounded by barbed wire and run by the prisons system since late October.

“This centre should disappear, it’s not good for humans, or even for animals. There are even rats,” says al-Natour.

READ ALSO:

The couple, who have two sons aged 21 and 25, arrived in Denmark in 2014.

“My husband and I opened a shop selling Arabic products, it was going well. Then I decided to resume my studies, but now everything has just stopped,” says al-Natour, who “just wants to get (her) life back.”

“Going back to Syria means going to prison, or even death, since we’re opposed to Bashar al-Assad. He’s a criminal.”

Niels-Erik Hansen, who also represents this couple, says his clients are being “held hostage by the Danish authorities.”

The government is trying “to spread the message that ‘in Denmark, we almost deport to Syria’,” he says.

Amnesty International recently criticised Syrian security forces’ use of violence against dozens of refugees who returned home.

Danish authorities meanwhile insist it’s safe for Syrians to go back.

“If you aren’t personally persecuted … there haven’t been acts of war in Damascus for several years now. And that is why it is possible for some to go back,” the government’s spokesman for migration, Rasmus Stoklund, tells AFP.

Some 35,500 Syrians currently live in Denmark, more than half of whom arrived in 2015, according to official statistics.

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