ROME -- Fausto Plan and Salvatore Failla, two Italians kidnapped by Islamic State in Libya last year and used as human shields, have been killed, the Italian Foreign Ministry said on Thursday.  They explained that Plan and Failla were two of  four Italian employees of construction company ‘Bonatti’ who were kidnapped in July 2015.

 The two Italian ISIS prisoners were killed during a transfer, on the outskirts of Sabratha.  The convoy in which they were travelling, according to intelligence gathered by judicial circles, was attacked by Libyan security forces causing the deaths of all passengers.  The militia later retrieved the bodies.

 According to reports by the judiciary Failla and Plan, seized in July 2015 and killed on Thursday in Libya, had been separated from the other two kidnapped Bonatti employees, Filippo Calcagno and Gino Pollicardo.  After the kidnap of the four Italians, the Rome prosecution office opened an investigation into kidnapping with the purpose of terrorism.

 Tullicardo, Plan, Calcagno and Failla were captured on July 20 last year whilst they were returning from Tunisia in the Mellitah zone, 60 km (37 miles) from Tripoli, near the compound for the Mellitah Oil Gas Company, who are ENI’s main shareholder.  Italian intelligence almost immediately gave credence to the theory that the Italians were taken by one of many militias in the criminal galaxy that is prevalent in the country.  A kidnapping for ransom, therefore it was carried out by “common criminals.”

 The concern therefore was that they would be handed over, either as a group or, worse, one by one, to one or several of the groups linked to ISIS who are now infiltrated into various areas in Libya and are particularly interested in handling kidnappings, in particular for the remarkable media implications.  According to one theory, given by Libyan military sources in recent months, the four Italians would have finished “in the hands of groups near the Fajr Libya militia”, the Islamic faction that has imposed a parallel government in Tripoli to oppose that of Tobruk, which is the only internationally recognised parliament.

 According to this potential sequence of events, the militia would have proposed an exchange: the Italians for seven Libyans being held in Italy under charges of migrant trafficking.  But there was never any confirmation and for months there has been no news.  According to a Libyan witness, returning to Tunisia from Sabratha, the two Italians who were killed would have been used as human shields by the ISIS jihadists in the clashes with militia on Wednesday south of the city, close to Surman.

 COPASIR, the Parliamentary Committee for the Intelligence and Security Services and for State Secret Control, met at 9 a.m. on Thursday morning after the undersecretary of the intelligence delegation, Marco Minniti, informed them of the deaths of the two Italian hostages in Libya.

 “Renzi’s hands are bloodied as much in Libya as in Italy,” said the Lega Nord leader Matteo Salvini, “In Italy he supports and frees immigration criminals, which is complicit with international terrorism.  Despite the news coming from Libya, Mattarella prides himself on Italy’s vanguard: either they’re crazy, or they’re complicit as much with Renzi as with Mattarella.  We hope that this incoming news is groundless.”

 Camera Renato Brunetta of the Forza Italia party has asked for an “ad horas” government report on the possible deaths of two of the four Italian hostages and on the “whole situation in the country”.  A similar request came from the Democratic Party of Lia Quartapelle for a report, “with the utmost prudence to safeguard the lives of the other two hostages.”

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