After 30 years of silence Carlo Celadon talks on TV about his kidnapping , the longest in Italian history . «There is no survival manual: these are things that when they fall from the sky we are forced to face. I definitely didn't think it could last this long. It was hard". Thus the man, interviewed exclusively yesterday by Eleonora Daniele on "Storie di Sera", broadcast in the late evening on Rai1. It all began on January 25, 1988, when in Arzignano a commando team made up of four or five people broke into the family villa of Carlo - who was 18 years old at the time -. They kidnapped him and took him to Aspromonte, where he spent 831 days, in seven different hideouts. «The light that filtered through was always little - said Celadon - because the dens were covered by leaves or bags of wire or straw , but some rays filtered through every day and that was what made me understand that a new day had been born. If I remember correctly, when I was released I knew perfectly well that it was May 5, 1990 . How did I know? Because every time a new ray of light filtered through the bag, I counted the extra day . I went on like this for 831 days."

Among the memories "inconvenienced" from the drawer are also those of his family, who at the time paid 7 billion lire for the ransom, and of his father Candido, an industrialist from Vicenza, who has now passed away. Celadon is now the father of two children. «For a long time I didn't tell them anything about what had happened to me, because I wasn't sure how to deal with it. Then the local newspaper wrote something during an occasion and while they were going to school someone who had read the article showed the pages to my children who were shocked. So I started telling them some things, but not too many, because fortunately they showed that they weren't too curious and as I put the story aside, they did too. And for them too, now, it's as if nothing had happened."

During the episode the presenter showed some images of those terrible days, but also of the party in Arzignano for her return. «I hadn't seen them in a long time. I remember praying a lot when I was in captivity and my prayer was aimed precisely at being able to overcome the post-kidnapping period, if I returned home, because I felt that I no longer had my head, I literally felt like I was going crazy." At the end of the interview the announcement: he will no longer be on TV. Too many emotions to relive and face: «It wasn't easy for me but I participated because this is the last time the spotlight will be on me. It's the last show I decided to participate in."

(Unioneonline/vf)

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