Gaza City, Gaza Strip – An Associated Press photographer was freed unharmed Tuesday after a harrowing day in the hands of Palestinians who abducted him at gunpoint and dressed him in women’s clothes to spirit him from one location to another.
Emilio Morenatti, who had been seized as he headed out of his Gaza City apartment, was brought before midnight to the office of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas by Fatah officials. It was not clear who kidnapped him, though officials said he was taken by criminals.
The government and main Palestinian groups denounced the abduction. No demands were made for his release.
Morenatti, a 37-year-old Spaniard, said he was unharmed.
“I’m tired but happy to have come back because there were very anguished moments,” said Morenatti.
He said the kidnappers held him in a small room, where he was kept for about four hours, during which he was visited by masked men. Later, he was put in a car dressed as a woman and taken to another location.
“They put a bag on my head and they dressed me up as a woman, as a woman in a long veil,” the photographer added.
Morenatti said he was blindfolded for much of the time, and his captors spoke only Arabic, which he doesn’t speak.
“I didn’t know at any moment what they were doing,” he said.
Morenatti’s family in Spain rejoiced at news of his release.
“We were all sitting around together, and when we heard the news, we yelled with joy and then we opened a bottle of rioja (wine) to celebrate,” Miguel Angel Mor enatti, a brother in Spain, told AP.
