Stewardess in cell in Arabia, the visit of the consul

A window opens in the difficult story of Ilaria De Rosa, the young hostess locked up for weeks in a prison near Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Today the 23-year-old of Venetian origin - the family lives in Resana, near Castelfranco (Treviso) - received the first visit to the cell of the Italian authorities. Saudi leaders have in fact granted a consular visit to the girl, arrested two weeks ago for detention and drug trafficking. A very serious accusation for the jurisdiction of the great Arab state.

The Consul General of Italy in Jeddah visited the young stewardess in prison, who, according to what is learned, is in good condition, and the mandate was signed to have local lawyers, advised by the consulate. The consular visit was reportedly obtained thanks to Minister Antonio Tajani's excellent relations with the Saudi authorities and the cooperation between the two embassies, given the zero tolerance in the Saudi campaign against drugs and the intransigence of the local authorities. Ilaria, according to what has been learned, would have been found in possession of a small amount of narcotics. A figure that, if confirmed, would not help the negotiation. In Resana Marisa Boin, the mother of the flight attendant of the Lithuanian Avion Express, spends long days marked by anguish.

The news that Rijad provides to Italian diplomacy comes with a dropper, and does not allow us to glimpse a solution in the short term. Marisa Boin until yesterday was convinced that the arrest of her daughter was due to "a great misunderstanding", because Ilaria - she said in an interview with La Stampa - "has never used drugs: she is not a girl who makes joints". And accustomed to studying and working abroad, "she knows that in countries like Arabia it is a huge risk to be found with drugs on her". Marisa, 55, a worker job, has been living for two weeks on the phone, in contact with our Foreign Ministry, with her other daughter, Laura, who lives in Brussels, and her husband, an air force officer employed in a NATO base in Belgium. The last telephone contact between mother and daughter dates back to May 4. Then darkness.

Fearing a kidnapping on May 8, the family reported the disappearance to the Carabinieri. Forty-eight hours later, the Foreign Ministry confirmed that Ilaria, on the other hand, was in prison, accused of having had drugs on her during a search she suffered while she was in the car with other friends. At Resana's, the mother says she is sure that her daughter has nothing to do with drugs, and speculates that it may have been one of the friends with whom she was discovered with a joint. It remains to be understood, then, why the Saudi police also got the young Italian hostess into trouble.