Details of the payment to the al-Nusra Front in exchange for the two women who were seized in July remain scarce, with one report alleging a $12m sum

This article is more than 5 years old

This article is more than 5 years old

Two Italian aid workers who have been held as hostages by Syria’s largest al-Qaida group since the summer have been freed, according to the office of Italy’s prime minister, Matteo Renzi.

“Vanessa Marzullo and Greta Ramelli are free and will soon return to Italy,” the office tweeted on Thursday night.

Palazzo_Chigi (@Palazzo_Chigi) Greta Ramelli e Vanessa Marzullo sono libere, torneranno presto in Italia

The news was applauded in the Italian parliament and by the European Union’s high representative for foreign affairs, Federica Mogherini, an Italian who tweeted that she was “happy for #VanessaandGreta and their families”.

Security sources told the Guardian that the women were released after the payment of a multimillion-dollar ransom to Jabhat al-Nusra, or the al-Nusra Front, which has direct ties to al-Qaida’s leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri. One report from Al Aan, a Dubai-based media group, said the ransom was worth $12m, but that report was not confirmed.

Islamic State militants seize four more foreign hostages in Syria Read more

European governments have been far more willing than the United States to pay ransom for hostages, a decision that has provoked intense debate in the US following the beheading of several Americans, among others, by the Islamic State (Isis) in 2014.

A spokesman for Renzi did not respond to request for comment on the ransom payment. The US Treasury said in 2012 that the kidnapping of civilians for ransom had become a significant source of terror financing and estimated that terrorist organisations had collected about $120m in ransom payments from 2004 to 2012.

News of the women’s release marked the end of a crisis that began in late July, when the two women, both in their early 20s, were seized near the northern city of Aleppo just days after arriving in Syria for aid work.

Ramelli and Marzullo were seized by an unknown Islamist group in Aleppo and then either sold or passed on to Jabhat al-Nusra late last year. They were held in the countryside near Aleppo, according to sources in Syria.

The last time the women were seen publicly was in a chilling video that was posted on YouTube in early January, in which they warned that they were in “big danger” of being executed.



The two were seen wearing the black hijab. “The government and its militaries are responsible for our lives,” one said in English, appearing to read from a statement.

The women students were described as idealists in Italian press reports. They had co-founded a group, Horryaty Project, to deliver medical goods to the war-torn country but had been urged by their parents not to travel there.

Ramelli’s mother, Antonella, described her daughter as “determined”.



“Can you change your daughter who has these values and strong ideals about solidarity and human empathy? Should you?” she wrote on Facebook, according to press reports.

“We are brimming with happiness,” she said on Thursday night, according to reports. “We can’t wait to hug our daughter again.”