They were kidnapped on the road leading from Ghat to the headquarters of their company in Bi’r Tahala, the two Italians and Italian-Canadian employees of Con.I.COS.
Three cars blocked the jeep and fired at their driver who in the opinion of local media was wounded in the foot, tied up and left in a desert area not far from the site of the abduction.
The dynamic is typical of seizure actions, three cars to stop the goal and well targeted shots is immobilized the driver, a fairly quiet aim for the standard of those parties saw that the three were moving without any escort, perhaps confident their established relationships with the local population.
had not warned of their presence, the crisis unit of the Foreign Ministry, is reported by the Italian media, that after the kidnapping ended badly the four Italian Bonatti had explicitly requested that were known to the authorities the activities of Italian companies in Libya.
It is not clear the identity of the group that performed the action, and still have not been requests to the Italian authorities Con.I.COS company in which they work.
The two Italian citizens are Bruno Cacace, 56 years old residing in Borgo San Dalmazzo (Cuneo), and Danilo Calonego, 66 year old of the province of Belluno Sedico (Belluno), who worked in Libya since ’79. People who knew perfectly the area and the local population.
Con.I.Cos The company is headquartered in Mondovi in the province of Cuneo and is active for several years in Libya so as to have opened three branches in the country, Tripoli, Benghazi and Ghat.
They should have been one of the main sub contractors highway promised by the Italian government to Gaddafi and after its fall to the Tripoli government but the deterioration of the political situation has apparently blocked the project
The area of Fezzan is not considered high-risk by the foreign ministry, despite the whole country is crossed by tribal clashes, ISIS infiltration and tragic economic crisis due to the perseverance of the current instability.
Other emergency units and services have a clear picture of the Italian presence in Libya but in this case it seems that the company had not communicated the presence on Libyan territory he had prepared security measures to protect its employees.
This case is emblematic of the context, they are forced to operate specialized personnel in crisis areas, often without the necessary precautions required by law on safety at work, which also includes such situations.
Also very often the continuous training of personnel to operate in those areas is not accomplished by giving the personal experience of the individual the success of their business, considering in any way prior training as necessary to prepare staff to identify risks and plan its safety activities.
The prosecutor’s office in Rome will investigate the kidnapping and will open a case file subject to the first investigations of ROS.
