The father of a 17-month-old kidnapped last week has been placed under investigation after police discovered he had downloaded hundreds of images of child pornography on his computer.
Paolo Onofri, a local executive with the postal service, defended himself by telling police that he was 'collecting research for an expose'. The downloaded files were discovered on Onofri's portable computer which police found in the basement of property he had here in the city, and not at his home outside Parma.
The files had been deleted from the computer just before the parents told the police of their child's kidnapping. Specialised police officers, however, managed to recover those files and analyse them.
Investigators said they do not believe there is any link between the kidnapping and the pornography.
Tommaso was grabbed from his home on the evening of March 2. According to his parents, the kidnappers first cut the power supply, plunging the house into darkness. When the boy's father went out to investigate, he was attacked by two masked men.
The intruders, who were armed with a knife and a fake gun, bundled the the father inside and bound him, his wife and 8-year-old son.
Then, after taking about 150 euros but little else, they seized the child from his highchair and disappeared. The case of the kidnapped child, who suffers from epilepsy, has attracted national and international attention and last Sunday Pope Benedict XVI made a public appeal for his release.
Other appeals for the boy's release have come thick and fast. Soccer players have sported T-shirts emblazoned with 'Free Tommaso', friends and sympathizers have set up a web blog and even inmates in Italian prisons have added their voice to appeals for the boy's release. Although investigators have no real clue to the motivation behind the kidnapping, they are considering the possibility that it may be linked to his father's job.
Italy's postal service also acts as a bank and Paolo Onofri was responsible for the local loans department.
Police think he may have offended somebody by refusing a loan or that perhaps the abductors believed he has access to secret codes to bank accounts.
