KHARTOUM - The Italian businessman Marco Zennaro, who has been held in a Sudanese prison for two and a half months, has been released and is currently under house arrest in a hotel as he awaits trial, according to the Italian Foreign Ministry.

  Zennaro, a 46-year-old Venetian, had flown to Sudan in March to sort out a dispute with a distributor for his company Zennaro Trafo, of which he is the sole administrator. Things soon turned for the worse and on April 1 Zennaro was captured in a hotel by a group of militiamen, his passport confiscated and a charge of fraud thrown on him.

  Zennaro Trafo has for many years sold electrical transformers to Sedec, the Sudanese national electric company, and Marco Zennaro has always had good business relations with the country, his father and grandfather both having had dealings there.

  However, according to a request on May 24 by the Italian MEP Gianantonio Da Re to the European Commission for immediate action, “he has been charged with fraud but has in actual fact been kidnapped to extract a ransom payment. According to press reports, his family have received demands for payment that include references to the case of Giulio Regeni, the researcher from Friuli who was seized and killed in Egypt in 2016.”

  For the majority of his unlawful carceration, Zennaro was being held in a stiflingly hot cell with 30 other inmates who only spoke Arabic, sharing only one toilet and no bed.

  His release came after a long period of negotiations with Italian diplomats and politicians, led by the Italian Ambassador in Khartoum, Gianluigi Vassallo, and Luigi Vignali, the General Director of Italians Abroad and Migration Unit at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Vignali had been sent by Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio to Sudan to meet with Zennaro and protest Sudanese authorities, ordering his immediate release and fair judicial treatment.

  Though Zennaro is now free from his cell, he cannot leave the country and has to now await his trial in a hotel.

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