F-B-F.org -

KITTY VAN ZYL throws another batch of homemade sausage fritters in the frying pan. Nearing the end of another nightly cook-in for hundreds of neighbourhood children and adults, she complains bitterly in her native Afrikaans about indifference to human misery. “I asked the local Kentucky Fried Chicken for its leftovers,” says Mrs Van Zyl, 42, saviour of Sanddrift East, a dustbowl Cape Town housing scheme. But this is the first case in which the family’s assets have been made available to pay the ransom.The Justice Minister, Giovanni Maria Flick, insisted yesterday that the law was working in that the number of kidnap victims has fallen sharply since 1991 (just a handful a year, compared with 50 or 60 in the 1970s).

But even he said some amendments would be necessary to tighten controls on the ransom money and toughen sentences for kidnappers.. Despite capturing four members of the kidnap gang, the state failed either to sniff out Mr Soffiantini’s prison, or to scare the bandits into lowering their ransom demand significantly.Earlier this month, the state was forced to admit defeat and a magistrate issued a special order unfreezing the Soffiantini family’s assets. The ransom money – 5 billion lire (about pounds 2m) – was delivered by Mr Soffiantini’s best friend last week in two suitcases.As Mr Soffiantini, looking haggard and grey but otherwise in good physical condition, was welcomed back to the bosom of his family, it became clear that the law had been played for a fool and that the worst kind of message had been sent to the Sardinian gangs – keep your nerve, hold on to your hostage and you will get your money in the end.”Since the law was passed … the length of time victims have spent in captivity has doubled and the consequences for the credibility of the state have been insidious,” the crime expert Beppe D’Avanzo wrote in the Corriere della Sera.Mr Soffiantini is not the first kidnap case to give rise to such problems.

Ten-year-old Fourak Hassan, kidnapped a few years ago, had to be bailed out with state money after months of heart-rending headlines. As family members repeatedly complained, the restriction on their assets only prolonged his agony as they were obliged to raise money from friends. Right up to the end, negotiations for Mr Soffiantini’s release were hampered by the notoriously inefficient Italian post, which delivered ultimatums well after the deadlines laid down in them had passed.Most controversial of all has been an Italian law which bars the victim’s family from paying any ransom. The idea of the law, which was passed in 1991, is to deter bandits from undertaking kidnaps in the first place, and to leave responsibility for the negotiation process with cool-headed professionals working for the state rather than over-emotional next-of- kin.But in Mr Soffiantini’s case, the mechanism broke down. Subsequent police searches through the brushland of southern Tuscany were sabotaged because someone in the police kept tipping off the media. The proposed changes in the law, or civil code, will satisfy some gay campaigners but disappoint and infuriate others.Homosexual groups have been pushing for gay couples to be given the right to marry in the eyes of the state The reform falls short of this demand.

It would not give couples who sign the “common pacts” – whether homosexual or heterosexual – the right to adopt children or obtain medical help to have children within the health system.The extension of the new status to any two people living together, whether in a sexual partnership or not, is a deliberate political ploy by the government. Many Socialist deputies had warned in advance that they did not want to vote for something which could be presented by right-wing opponents as a “pederasts’ charter”.The Socialist MPs can now argue that the change in the law will also be of benefit to – say – two old ladies who have chosen to live together for companionship.Even so, the proposed new status for unmarried couples will be fiercely opposed by the family lobby and many members of centre-right parties.It is unclear whether couples would have to prove that a stable partnership has existed for a given period A waiting time of five years is under consideration.. DURING HIS eight months of captivity at the hands of Sardinian bandits, Giuseppe Soffiantini was chained to a tree in the woods, had both his ears severed, was given only a fraction of his usual heart medicine and lived off stale bread and spring water. So when the 62-year-old industrialist from the northern city of Brescia was released on a lonely roadside outside Florence on Monday night, he, his family and the whole of Italy breathed a large sigh of relief. It has been a relief tinged with controversy, however, as the Italian state examines one of the most difficult kidnapping cases of recent years and the apparent failure of its idiosyncratic legislation to deal with the problem.
In many ways, Mr Soffiantini’s case is an illustration of how not to handle a kidnap. An attempt to rescue him back in October ended in a shoot- out in which one undercover agent was killed. The government is preparing a change in the French civil code which would give official blessing to “common interest pacts”, or formal partnerships between gay couples or heterosexual partners who prefer not to marry.
The Prime Minister, Lionel Jospin, promised to do something to improve the legal and financial status of homosexual partnerships during his successful general election campaign last May.

HOMOSEXUAL couples in France will soon be able to sign contracts with one another which will give them most of the same legal and tax benefits as married couples. Families walked miles, some barefoot, through the snow from villages where thousands of their relatives and neighbours were killed, to the regional centre of Rustaq, where aid is being co-ordinated. Relief agencies have put the death toll from the quake, and a smaller tremor at the weekend, as high as 4,200 and say thousands more are homeless.
- Reuters, Rustaq. The Nigerian-led forces, who are fighting to return elected President Ahmed Tejan Kabbah to power, are now only three miles from the city centre.
– AP, Freetown. A minute of last week’s meeting of Labour’s Parliamentary Committee – the key contact point between the leadership and backbench MPs – said they had discussed the Companies Bill and Lord McNally’s all-party amendment on predatory pricing, on which the Government roundly defeated last Monday.
The meeting was chaired by Clive Soley, Parliamentary Labour Party chairman, who told The Independent on Tuesday that he favoured a compromise under which action could be taken against any business which cut its price below cost for more than a fixed period.The pricing issue was raised during Prime Minister’s question time yesterday by Paddy Ashdown.