Australian woman saved from attempted kidnap by Italian police

Dramatic footage has showed the moment a 35-year-old Australian-Montenegrin woman was saved from an alleged kidnapping in the Italian city of Turin.

Italian police rescued an Australian woman after the 35-year-old was bundled into a van by hooded men in broad daylight in a bizarre bungled kidnap attempt in the northern city of Turin.

Dramatic video footage shows the men pushing the woman, who has not been publicly identified, into a black Volkswagen van in a city centre street as she screamed and tried to break free.

Police said she may have been mistakenly targeted in an attempt by the perpetrators to recover money lost in a currency exchange scam. But they have not ruled out that she was somehow involved in the scam.

Video shows police rescuing the woman who was believed to be abducted. Picture: Supplied

The kidnappers also tried to abduct her male companion but he managed to escape and shout for police help while astonished passers-by looked on as the incident unfolded at around 11am local time on Wednesday, Italian news reports said.

“The woman started screaming while her escort ran away,” said Saverio Moffa, an ice cream parlour employee who witnessed the scene.

“The man who took her looked like a bouncer. Her face was covered with a balaclava,” he told La Republicca newspaper.

One of the attempted abductors is detained. Picture: Supplied

The van then drove off at speed and a short time later pulled into a parking lot where police quickly arrived and arrested three men, all German nationals, and freed the woman, who was found in the back of the vehicle with her hands tied, reports said.

The woman suffered only minor bruising and left a Turin police station after she gave a statement, Marco Martino, the head of the Turin Flying Squad police unit which arrested the suspects, told News Corp.

He said she was an Australian-Montenegrin national. Initial reports said she was Australian-Serbian.

Mr Martino said her companion, a Montenegrin national, who ran away was known to police for involvement in money scams and he said police have not been able to track him down to interview him.

The van the woman was dragged into. Picture: Supplied

He said he thought the woman was somehow involved in the scenario but was obliged to let her go as the men arrested told police that they had tried to abduct the wrong people and that neither she nor her companion were their intended targets.

The arrested people are a German citizen, probably the person that was the victim of a 50,000-euro scam that was carried out in Milan in June, an Austrian citizen and two German citizens who work for a detective agency, said Mr Martino.

He said police had found bulletproof jackets, pepper spray, fake guns, and balaclavas in their vehicle.

CCTV footage of their arrest posted on Italian news websites shows police officers, their guns drawn, going into the parking lot building where the kidnappers had taken refuge and re-emerging with three men in handcuffs.

The kidnappers appeared to be incompetent amateurs who “acted … in an idiotic way as they could now be in big trouble as kidnapping in Italy is considered very seriously, and can incur a jail sentence of up to 24 years,” said Mr Martino.

A view of Turin, Italy, with the main city landmark, the Mole Antonelliana, (R) and the Alps. Picture: AP

Media reports said that the German who was cheated out of the money in Milan had decided not to go to the police and instead hired a detective agency to recover his cash.

The suspects’ arrest was witnessed by the owner of the parking lot in Turin where the men tried to hide after abducting the Australian woman.

“They came in and asked me if they could leave the van here. They spoke in English … When I told them ‘no’, explaining to them that the van was too big, they turned around to leave, but they found themselves in front of the police,” the garage owner told Italian media.

Police said that the Australian woman had left Australia four or five years ago and was now living in Vienna.