Mottarone tragedy, media: "Eitan brought to Israel by his grandfather"

• Mottarone tragedy.

  Eitan leaves hospital and returns home with her aunt

• The Childhood Charter turns 30.

  Day dedicated to Eitan

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September 11, 2021Eitan Biran, his family's only 6-year-old survivor of the Mottarone tragedy, was taken from Italy to Israel in what Israeli media refer to as a "suspected kidnapping" by relatives in Israel. This was reported by TV Kan according to which the legal guardian of the little boy and paternal aunt Aya Biran-Nirko, who lives in Pavia, filed a complaint with the Italian police stating that "the child was kidnapped by his grandfather Shmuel Peleg". 

Eitan - according to the reconstruction of TV Kan - would have left the house in Pavia with his grandfather this morning but without returning in the afternoon "as had been agreed". Her paternal aunt Aya Biran-Nirko - according to TV Kan - repeatedly tried to contact her grandfather until she received a message from him informing that "Eitan has returned home" to Israel. The same source then added that Aya Biran-Nirko also subsequently received a message from Peleg's lawyer confirming that little Eitan had arrived in Israel.

The trip from Italy, according to the broadcaster, was made possible by the fact that the grandfather, Shmuel Peleg, continued to have the child's Israeli passport in contrast to the provisions of an Italian judge.   

For months the little boy had been at the center of a dispute between his aunts. Already last August the maternal aunt Gali Peri in an interview had made a harsh complaint in the Israeli media stating that "Eitan was stolen from a family that did not know him, which previously had not been close to him in any way" and immediately later he added that the "little one was hostage in Italy". 

"We are shocked and incredulous, we could not imagine it would go that far". This was stated to ANSA by the lawyer Armando Simbari, who with Cristina Pagni and Massimo Sana assists Aya Biran Nirko, aunt and tutor of little Eitan. "For now I can only say that this afternoon the child had a meeting with his maternal relatives and that he did not return to his aunt's home in Pavia at the appointed time", supports the lawyer.