ROME -- The other two Italian hostages being held in Libya have been released and confirm that “we are well, but psychologically devastated,” Italian Foreign Ministry confirmed on Friday morning.  Gino Pollicardo and Filippo Calcagno were kidnapped on July 19, along with the two other Bonatti employees, Salvatore Failla and Fausto Piano, who were killed during a raid on a militant hideout by Libyan security forces on Wednesday.

 They are in a house on the periphery of Sabratha, 70 km (43.5 miles) from Tripoli.  In a recently released video, the two Italians say they are safe and in the hands of the local ‘police’, whilst Foreign Ministry sources say they will soon be transferred to a secure zone before being taken charge of by Italian agents who will bring them back to their home country.  Their liberation is a development from the killing of Failla and Fausto.

 Sabratha Media Center published a photograph of the two straight after their release and a note (dated March 5), which was written by Pollicardo: “Today March 5 2016 were are free and we are discretely but psychologically ruined.  We urgently need to return to Italy.”  Pollicardo’s son, also named Gino, announced “It’s finished, it’s finished,” shouted as he entered his house, whilst his wife Ema Orellana was in tears as she told reporters, “I heard him on the telephone.”  On Thursday the undersecretary for the Intelligence delegation Marco Minniti, thanks to intelligence information on the ground, was able to assure that the two Italians “are alive.”

 The news of the deaths of Piano and Failla came after the government’s decision – which was made almost a month ago – to send a contingent of special forces in, possibly directly from the secret service, with Palazzo Chigi coordinating the operation.  A decision dictated by the need not be put off by the interventionism orientated game of Italy’s “allies” and, as Generals Leonardo Tricarico and Vincenzo Camporini explained to IlFattoQuotidiano.it, contrasts clearly with the fine line prudently held by Italy, so that it finds itself on the opposite side to that held by France and Great Britain.

 Whilst there is not yet any official information on the deaths of Salvatore Failla and Fausto Piano, there is every probability that they were just one step away from liberation after a long and difficult negotiation for their release.  It’s difficult therefore to understand how or why they were killed.  According to several sources, the two technicians were killed during a gunfight between their captors – it’s unknown how close to ISIS they were – and the Sabrathan military, who are loyal to the Tripoli government.

 Several military leaders have spoken out saying that it wasn’t just any fire-fight against an ISIS hideout, but that the group of jihadists were being hit after being implicated in the attack on two four-by-fours, resulting in eight deaths, by a Syrian, a Tunisian who was the wife of “one of the victims” and her 3-year-old son who were arrested. This theory has been confirmed by nearby Italian forces: the two Italians were killed “during a transfer” between two hideouts, around 70 km (43.5 miles) from Tripoli.  The Sabrathan military counsellor Taher El-Gharably has reported on March 2 the military had “followed an ISIS group who were escaping from the centre of Sabratha towards the periphery: there was a gun fight, an intense exchange of fire during which caused the deaths of several of them, whilst the rest escaped.” The Libyans then cited the Tunisian woman who reportedly ‘confessed’ that the four Italian technicians were “in the hands of ISIS” but had been separated.

 The deaths of Failla and Piano, however, could be linked to the more recent clash between military and jihadists to the south of Sabratha, at the same moment as Abu Bakr al Baghdadi attempted a failed attack on Ben Guardane in Tunisia.  On Wednesday night, just after midnight in Italy, the Sabratha ‘Media Center’ published a video online, around 30 seconds long, and showing several bodies in a building that was claimed to be an ISIS hideout that the military confirmed singling out in the Sabrathan raid.  A voice out of the shot counts the dead, arriving at 14.  There are also cartons of milk, or more likely yogurt, and at least a couple of red sleeping bags, which it appears the occupants of the building had put together to make a makeshift bed.

 Just hours after, a Libyan testament sent to Tunisia from Sabratha allegedly recounted that amongst the victims there were also two Italians, “human shields” of the jihadists who were trying to escape the bullets.  They began circulating the photos of the “western” victims and the jihadists killed in the blitz.  This time the bodies are in the open, one near the wheel of a four-by-four.  Domenico Quirico for La Stampa claims that the two were killed with “a blow to the back of the neck”

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