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December 20, 2020 "Several times we were told that they were about to release us, but then they were moving us to another prison".

This was stated by the commander of the Medinea fishing boat, Pietro Marrone, at the exit from the carabinieri barracks in Mazara del Vallo, at the end of the interrogation conducted by the military of the Ros, delegated by the prosecutors of the Rome prosecutor.



The captain of the boat told reporters the diary of the 108 days of imprisonment in Benghazi, under the control of militias loyal to General Khalifa Haftar.

"They tossed us left and right and we feared they would end it", but we never suffered "physical violence, they humiliated us, shouted at us, sometimes they put our backs to the wall", he says.

On the hypothesis of the 'exchange of prisoners', Commander Marrone said that "we had understood something about the exchange of prisoners, but they didn't tell us anything, they always signaled us saying that it depended on people superior to them, then they released us without tell us why ".



In the afternoon, the carabinieri of the Ros listened to three other fishermen, the interrogations will continue tomorrow and Tuesday.

Rewinding the memories, Commander Marrone reconstructed the moment of the seizure of the two fishing boats, which took place on the evening of September 1, 38 miles from the coast of Benghazi: "They put us on board the patrol boat and then took us away from the fishing boats the next morning. . We stopped immediately - he added - they fired in the air and when they asked the commander to get off, I got off ".



The first three, four days we were in the ministry and then they moved us to four different prisons.

We thought it was a normal kidnapping for international waters, then we saw that it was getting longer and longer and it seemed more and more political. "During the entire imprisonment, however, the 18 fishermen would have run out of information." We were alone. , without news, they all spoke in Arabic and we understood some things from the Tunisians.

We were desperate because we didn't know anything, we thought we wouldn't arrive by Christmas.

After the phone call of 11 November (the only one granted by the Farnesina ed) we thought they would free us, but instead they took us back to prison.

They didn't tell us anything about the things our family members did here - he concluded, referring to the organized demonstrations - first they told us that after 10 days we would be free, but then they locked us up again in a cell in the dark ".