Twenty four hours after the news spread about Italian Jesuit Fr.
Paolo Dall’Oglio’s kidnapping in Syria and the world was none the wiser
about his whereabouts. Reuters news agency set alarm bells ringing when it published the news of the Roman Jesuit’s kidnapping from a street in the city of Raqqa, in North-Eastern Syria last Tuesday afternoon.
He was apparently abducted by members of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS), an Al-Qaeda-linked fighter group which has gained a foothold in Northern Syria.
But AFP news agency was given a different version of the facts by Rami Abdel Rahmane director of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, one of the main sources of news on the Syrian war.
Rahmane said it was Fr. Dall’Oglio who went to meet some of ISIS’s leaders. ISIS’s militia are predominantly foreign and are held responsible for numerous kidnappings.
The Jesuit – who has lots of contacts among the rebels fighting against Bashar Al Assad – was apparently trying to negotiate the release of some hostages (notably a group representing Arab television broadcaster Orient Tv, whose members were kidnapped four days ago in Aleppo).
Before leaving Raqqa – where he had arrived from Turkey – Fr. Dall’Oglio apparently asked those who had accompanied him to announce his disappearance if he did not return within three days. Three days have gone by and yet nothing.
Putting the pieces of the puzzle together, the question that arises is this: did alarm bells start ringing when people in Raqqa smelt something fishy going on in the father’s meeting with the militia? Or is the kidnapping story just a misunderstanding?
It is because of these conflicting reports (and the difficulty of obtaining news directly) that the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Vatican are being very cautious about confirming the kidnapping.
Both said there is not enough evidence to confirm this.
There is one thing, however, that is causing a great deal of concern: The Jesuit’s disappearance has come in the midst of an increasingly open conflict between Kurds and Islamists on the Syrian rebel front.
The centre of this conflict is right where Fr. Dall’Oglio was at the time of his disappearance.
Tthe Kurdish people’s protection committee – the Kurdish militia fighting in Syria – called for a general uprising against ISIS and other Al-Nusra Front jihadist militias. The Kurds accuse the Islamists of killing their leader Isa Huso today in Qamichli, a city of the Syrian-Turkish border.
Apart from the fact that Fr. Dall’Oglio disappeared from the very place where the conflict has been hotting up, another fact that could have provoked his kidnapping was his open condemnation of violence against the Kurds in a speech he gave in Raqqa on Sunday.
This is according to French NGO L’Oeuvre d’Orient. His message was in line with his vision of a free Syria, which needs to make space for people of different backgrounds and religions.
But it may not have gone down well with radical Islamists.