Photo of girl kidnapped from Vatican reopens 1983 inquiry

The Times/Richard Owen in Rome


<snip>
ITALIAN police have reopened an inquiry into a kidnapping that took place 21 years ago after claims that a teenage girl taken hostage by anti-papal conspirators is secretly living under an assumed name near the Vatican.

Emanuela Orlandi, the 15-year-old daughter of a Vatican employee, was kidnapped in 1983, two years after the attempted assassination of the Pope.

Investigators in Italy and the Vatican believe the kidnappers were Turkish extremists linked with the KGB, who hoped to exchange her for Mehmet Ali Agca, the Turkish gunman who fired at the Pope in St Peter’s Square on May 13, 1981. Agca was released in 2000 after 19 years in jail and extradited to Turkey.

Emanuela, a vivacious teenager with long black hair, vanished on June 22, 1983, while on her way to a music lesson.
<snip>
More:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,175-1101955,00.html