Fifty thousand dollars to get the “pass”. Money that was not, however, in the availability of the people, including the ambassador Luca Attanasio and the carabinieri Vittorio Iacovacciwho were on board the UN convoy stopped by a group of bandits exactly one year ago, on February 22 in Congo. Hence the attempted kidnapping ended tragically. From the papers of the Rome Public Prosecutor’s Office, which in recent weeks has closed the investigations into Rocco Leone, deputy director of Pam, the UN food program and his collaborator Mansour Rwagaza. The accusation against them is of manslaughter for not having respected the security protocols in the preparation of Attanasio’s mission. By mid-March, the Roman magistrates should proceed with the request for indictment.
In the interrogation reports, the two suspects reconstruct what happened in Goma, in the Virunga Park area. “I gave everything I had, 300-400 dollars and my cell phone – Leone told investigators -. The ambassador also began to take off the things he was wearing, certainly his wallet and perhaps his watch. Iacovacci to stay calm and not take the gun, maybe the ambassador told him too “. For his part, Rwagaza said that the bandits “ordered us to hand over the money. They wanted $ 50,000, otherwise they would have taken us to the forest and then they would have asked for a ransom … I told Rocco Leone that we had to cooperate to prevent us from being shot”.
The two are accused of having “certified the false, in order to obtain permission from the local offices of the UN Security Department, indicating in the request for authorization to the mission, instead of the names of Ambassador Attanasio and Carabiniere Iacovacci, – it is said in the charge – those of two Pam employees so as to mislead the offices as to the real composition of the convoy and this because they had not forwarded the request, as prescribed by the UN protocols, at least 72 hours earlier “.
According to the magistrates of piazzale Clodio, the employees of the Pam would also have “omitted, in violation of the UN protocols, to inform the Monusco peace mission five days before the trip, which is responsible for providing specific information on security by informing the mission organizers. of the associated risks and providing indications on the precautions to be taken (such as an armed escort and armored vehicles) “.
And just in the days when the Roman investigation has clarified the contours of the ambush, a volume arrives in the bookstore in which to speak is Zakia Seddiki, Attanasio’s wife, the woman of Moroccan origin whom the diplomat had met on a previous mission to Morocco. “That day I had to be with Luca – reveals the woman -. It was a very normal morning, like all the others, I had prepared the girls and I was taking them to school by car. Luca was a dreamer who looked at the world like a beautiful garden, always with great motivations, very serious and precise at work: despite his angel face, he would get very angry if things were not done with correctness and honesty “.
Source: Ansa
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