Kidnapping, torture, and bombings: charges against 6 individuals.

Kidnapping for extortion, torture of the victims, and homemade bombs placed on their cars or near the homes of their relatives. Carabinieri, with an investigation coordinated by the Rome Anti-Mafia Directorate (DDA), have dismantled a criminal group that for months has sown terror on the Roman coastline and surrounding areas. Six precautionary measures are currently being executed by the military of the Investigative Unit of the Ostia Group: three people are in prison, one woman is under house arrest with an electronic bracelet, and two other alleged accomplices are subject to daily reporting to the Public Prosecutor's Office. The charges include kidnapping for extortion, aggravated extortion (using weapons and involving multiple individuals), and attempted extortion. According to the investigation, the spiral of extreme violence was triggered by the disappearance of a bag – originally entrusted to some of the victims – which, according to the alleged perpetrators, contained cash and luxury watches worth an estimated over one million euros, likely of illicit origin. The investigation by the prosecutor's office and the Carabinieri documented four kidnappings for extortion (and one attempted kidnapping) that occurred between July and November 2025. The victims were subjected to severe torture, being forcibly taken from the street, held in apartments or abandoned buildings, and tied up, threatened, and subjected to brutal violence in order to obtain information about the contents of the bag. The threats and torture were carried out using firearms, bolt cutters, hammers, baseball bats, rubber truncheons, and flammable materials. For the same purpose, the group also committed acts of vandalism: placing homemade bombs on the windshields of cars or near the homes of the victims' relatives, and intentionally damaging and setting fire to a car on the night of November 30, 2025. The success of the operation, according to a statement from the Rome Provincial Command, is the result of "a highly sophisticated investigative effort conducted by the Carabinieri of Ostia, who operated effectively despite the climate of deep silence and terror in which the victims found themselves, some of whom were forced to flee at night to other regions of Italy to evade their pursuers." The investigation developed, among other things, through a thorough "cross-referencing" analysis of telephone and internet traffic data, the forensic extraction of copies of smartphones used by the victims, and the acquisition and analysis of footage from surveillance cameras. Reproduction reserved © Copyright ANSA