Italy: Police rescue abducted Pakistani teen

Fano, 19 Jan. (AKI) – Italian police have rescued a 17-year-old Pakistani girl in the country’s northeast and arrested her father over her alleged abduction after a massive search operation. Police found Almas Mahmood in good health on a highway between Bologna and Ancona on Tuesday after her estranged father Akatar kidnapped her in front of her school in the town of Fano.

Almas, who has grown up in Italy, was removed from her family and placed in local care last April after her father savagely beat her for being “too westernised”.

Witnesses on Monday said they saw Almas being bundled kicking and screaming into a car by a man, believed to be her father.

She had tried to make an emergency call from her mobile phone, but dropped it in the commotion.

Almas’ mother, brother and sister were reportedly also inside the car, which drove off in the direction of Bologna.

Italian police were on Tuesday reportedly deciding whether to arrest Almas’ mother, who allegedly opposed her daughter’s “western” style of dress and friendships.

Her father, an immigrant street hawker, allegedly threatened social workers and staff at the children’s home where she was living, but Almas had pleaded with judges not to return her to her family.

Giuseppe Franchini, the headmaster at the technical school where Almas is a student, described her father as “integrated in Italy economically but not culturally.”

The issue of Muslim cultural integration in Italy has been brought into stark relief after several “honour” killings in recent years.

Last September, a Moroccan girl, Sanaa Dafani was murdered in northeastern Italy, allegedly by her father. She had a relationship with an older Italian man,

In 2006, in the northern town of Brescia in 2006 a 20-year-old Pakistani girl, Hina Saleem died after her throat was slit by male relatives after she wore jeans, worked in a pizzeria and went to live with her Italian boyfriend.

After the case, Italy’s previous centre-left Italian government issued a ‘charter of values’ for immigrants.

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