Girl’s kidnap ‘closed’

Press, 6 September 1983, Page 8

Girl’s kidnap ‘closed’

NZPA-Reuter Rome Men who claimed to have kidnapped a Vatican employee’s daughter two months ago said in a message yesterday that the operation was "closed.” After an anonymous telephone call a reporter of the Italian news agency, Ansa, found a tape-recorded message from the self-styled abductors in a dustbin opposite the house where the kidnap victim, Emanuela Orlandi, lived.

Her kidnappers, believed to be Turkish, have sought the release of Mehmet Ali Agca, a Turkish gunman who is now serving a life sentence for wounding Pope John Paul in 1981.

With the tape was a photocopy of a sheet of music with addresses and telephone numbers of three friends of Emanuela, who disappeared when she was returning home from a Rome music school on June

22. The message said that, “The operation to exchange Vatican citizen Emanuela Orlandi (is) to all effects closed as pre-announced in the programe of communiques." It said that the last previous authentic message from the kidnappers had been on July 21 — an apparent reference to letters sent from Frankfurt, West Germany, to Ansa and the Rome daily, “H Messaggero.” t . The letters repeated earlier demands for the release of Agca and threatened further kidnappings. They arrived the day after the supposed kidnappers had said they would kill Emanuela, aged 15, if Agca was not freed. Agca has said that he does not want to be exchanged for the girl. The latest message implicitly rejected the authenticity of several statements

since July 21 coming from an otherwise unknown “Turkish anti-Christian Liberation Front” which said that the deadline for Emanuela’s release had been extended to October 30.

July 30 was the only deadline and had never been extended, the tape-recording said.

In recent weeks the police have received many calls saying that Emanuela’s body could be found in various parts of the country. They have followed them all up but found nothing. It seems increasingly unlikely that the case will ever be solved.

Yesterday’s anonymous telephone caller said that another message had been left in a car of the State television network, R.A.1., at Castel Gandolfo, near Rome, summer residence of the Pope. Ansa said that the message contained criticisms of Vatican diplomacy.