The Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs is hard at
work trying to get Fr.Paolo Dall’Oglio released with the same degree of
discretion employed in the case of Italian correspondent Domenico
Quirico who was finally released last Sunday after being held captive in
Syria since last April.
In Dall’Oglio’s case however, communication
channels remain “fragile and contradictory,” said Italian foreign
affairs minister Emma Bonino in a statement to Italian radio station Radio24.
This was in answer to a question being asked all over Italy at the
moment: Does Domenico Quirico’s release mean there is also hope for Fr.
Dall’Oglio, who disappeared from the city of Raqqa in north-eastern
Syria on 28 August?
In recent weeks the Italian Ministry of Foreign
Affairs had referred to these as two very different cases, making it
clear that communication with Quirico’s kidnappers had been far more
solid.
In a statement, Quirico himself said that the groups of militia
who kidnapped him were different to the Islamic State of Iraq and the
Levant (ISIS) an al-Qaeda affiliate, the main suspect in Fr.
Dall’Oglio’s kidnapping. These are just part of the Islamist galaxy of
parallel wars and banditry.
While the Farouq Brigade which
kept Quirico hostage is part of the Syrian National Council, ISIS is a
fully independent entity which in recent weeks was engaged in violent
clashes with the Free Syrian Army. This would explain why it is so hard
to obtain any reliable information regarding Fr. Dall’Oglio’s state and
whereabouts.
What is also worrying is the fact that Syrian
opposition activists have pointed the finger at ISIS for the murder of a
number of civil society representatives who opposed the radical
Islamisation of militia-controlled territories. The most recent case
involved the murder of Médecins Sans Frontières surgeon Muhammad Abyad,
whose body was found near Aleppo a few days ago. Abyad had been
kidnapped.
A part from Fr. Dall’Oglio, the exact whereabouts
of the Syro-orthodox bishop Yohanna Ibrahim and Greek Orthodox bishop
Boulos Yazigi, who were kidnapped last 22 April also remain unknown. The
only information held is that given by someone who had been travelling
with the two bishops and witnessed the kidnapping in person.
Bishop
Ibrahim had successfully negotiated the release of some kidnapped
persons and was involved in a mission to free Armenian Catholic priest
Michel Kayal and Greek Orthodox priest Isaak Moawad who went missing
last February.
Bishop Ibrahim had apparently paid an enormous ransom the
day before his kidnapping and was going to a meeting where the hostages
were going to be handed over. The person who witnessed the kidnapping
said the two bishops were taken away by a group of Chechen guerrilla
fighters in a no man’s land between a Free Syrian army checkpoint and
another checkpoint controlled by Assad’s troops.
There have been numerous rumours circulating,
regarding their whereabouts. Some have given them up for dead, while for
others there is still room for hope.
The latest rumour, which surfaced
about a week ago, comes from Turkish intelligence sources. They
apparently informed the religious communities represented by the two
prelates that they believed the men were still alive, but gave no
further details.