Haiti, engineer Giovanni Calì freed, kidnapped on 1 June last

Engineer Giovanni Calì, kidnapped last June 1st in Haiti, was released. This was reported by the Farnesina. Our countryman had been hired from the construction site where he worked by a local criminal group.

The release, after only 22 days, was possible thanks to the daily work of the Italian intelligence and the Crisis Unit of the Farnesina, which maintained contact with the family in Sicily day after day. The announcement was made by Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio, who thanked the intelligence and the Farnesina for the work done.

Giovanni Cal ‘, 74, from Catania, was in Haiti on behalf of the construction company Bonifica Spa, based in Rome, and was busy building a road. The clues immediately led the investigators in the direction of the various violent criminal gangs that engage in kidnappings for the purpose of blackmail, in particular of foreign officials and even priests.

In particular, we thought of the gang 400 Mawozo, already in the crosshairs of the police for the kidnapping of seven Catholic religious in Port-au-Prince, which would have asked for a ransom of 500 thousand dollars. A request that, according to local informed sources, was much higher than the average of ransoms in a country among the poorest in the world, then devastated by the 2010 earthquake, where in recent years the scourge of kidnappings for extortion purposes has increased significantly frightening. There were 243 of them last year alone.

“I hope for a quick and peaceful solution for everyone, especially for him, for his family and for his friends”, said the day after the kidnapping the governor of Sicily, Nello Musumeci, with whom he had worked for several years since 1995. when he was President of the council of the Province of Catania. At the Province of Catania Calì was councilor for public works, then manager (territorial planning, civil protection and transport) for a decade, until 2011. Before returning to the field as a “professional entrepreneur”, as he likes to define himself, with a construction specializing in work abroad.