WORLD : Rousing Welcome Greets Italian After 2 Years as Kidnap Victim

PAVIA, Italy —  A 20-year-old man who spent two years in the hands of kidnapers returned home today to a grateful mother and a cheering crowd of neighbors.

Hundreds of honking cars jammed the streets of Pavia, about 20 miles south of Milan, where Cesare Casella was reunited with his parents, ending one of Italy’s longest and most dramatic kidnapings for ransom.

Casella escaped Tuesday when his abductors, apparently panicked when they learned police patrols were nearby, left him chained to a pole in a mountain stream near the isolated southern village of Careri.

He was hugged and kissed by his mother, Angela, who last June provoked a national outcry when she spent 10 days touring the villages of the bandit-ridden Aspromonte mountain in Calabria, on the toe of Italy, demanding the release of her son. Village women dubbed her “Mother Courage” and demonstrated in her support.

Casella told police he managed to uproot the pole he had been chained to and escape with the chains still around his neck and wrists.

The youth’s father, auto salesman Luigi Casella, had paid $800,000 to the bandits on Aug. 15, 1988. But the kidnapers then demanded $4 million more, which they later reduced to $800,000.

Casella’s parents had been prepared to pay another $800,000 in ransom for their son.