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Eitan is in Italy: “I’m happy to be back home”

After 84 days in Israel, Eitan Biran, the only six-year-old boy who survived the tragedy of the Mottarone cable car, is back in Italy. The flight that brought him back from Tel Aviv landed in Bergamo on Friday evening. He will return to live with his aunt, who has custody of him. She’s the one who struggled to get him back after his maternal grandfather illegally brought him to Israel last September.

The entire return journey was made in such a way that the safety and privacy of the child was kept to the maximum. The family’s commitment is to help him overcome the trauma of the death of his parents, little brother and great-grandparents in the disaster of May 23, 2021 who lost their lives along with 11 other people. Upon landing, the police shielded him and his aunt Aya Biran’s family who accompanied him with her husband and daughters.

The policeman of the Pavia Mobile Squad, Andrea Lenoci, accompanied the child. It was he who reported Eitan’s sentence. “I’m glad to be back home”. With an escorted car they reached Travacò Siccomario, the town near Pavia where Eitan’s uncles live and where, after quarantine, he will be able to go to the school where his parents had already enrolled him to attend first grade, the school of the nuns. Canossian. He would have gone there already last September if his maternal grandfather, Shmuel Peleg, had not kidnapped him during one of the scheduled meetings taking him to Switzerland and then to Israel.

The Israeli judges agreed with Eitan’s aunt who had been appointed legal guardian by the Italian court. The Pavia prosecutor accuses the 58-year-old former Israeli army colonel Peleg and his accomplice, Gabriel Abutbul Alon, 50, of kidnapping. There is an international arrest warrant for them. Peleg cannot leave Israel. Alon is free on bail in Cyprus where he resides. Italy has requested extradition for both of them.

The lawyers of Eitan’s aunt asked that the spotlight be turned off “to allow Eitan to resume his life as a 6-year-old child.” A new phase must be opened to allow it “A more serene growth path, even more necessary if we consider the terrible tragedy that involved it”. A spokesperson for the Biran family concluded: «After 84 days of being illegally removed from his home, Eitan will now return to routine, to all medical, therapeutic and educational settings, to his friends in the neighborhood and to the school, to the community in he grew up with, and his beloved cat Oliver. ‘

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