A scheme by two Italian men to stage their own kidnappings by fake terrorists and pocket a share of the ransom went off the rails when they were sold on to real jihadists in Syria who held them for three years, prosecutors have claimed.
Alessandro Sandrini, 32, and Sergio Zanotti, 60, are suspected of separately signing up for the fake kidnappings with two Albanians and an Italian they met in cafés in their home town of Brescia in Lombardy.
Prosecutors allege that the men were flown to Turkey five months apart in 2016 by the gang, which had promised to take them to a secret location, fake a terrorist kidnapping and then split a ransom that would be paid by the Italian government.
Sandrini’s
