The man accused of kidnapping a British model in Italy and holding her captive in a remote village for six days says that it was all a big plot, and that the woman was in on it the whole time.
Lukasz Herba, 30, said through his lawyer that British model Chloe Ayling planned the plot with him to make a name for herself, adding that the pair had met in Paris to discuss the plot.
“He says the kidnap was a fabrication. They planned it together so she would become famous,” his lawyer, Katia Kolakowska, told the Mirror.
“There is evidence the two had an existing relationship.”
On Wednesday, Dec. 13, a Milan court tossed out this argument, The Sun reported.
A judge at the Corte d’Assises in Milan also rejected an application by Herba’s lawyer to force Ayling to travel to Italy to be questioned in the court, the Daily Mail reports.
However, Herba’s brother, Michal, could be extradited to Italy, a Westminster Magistrates’ Court ruled in September.
Ayling said she was drugged, kidnapped, and stuffed into a suitcase in Italy on July 11 after being invited to a fake modeling shoot by one of her alleged captors.
Michal is accused of conspiring with Herba to kidnap the 20-year-old mother-of-one.
Ayling claimed her captors were part of an online organization called “Black Death” and were going to sell her for sex on the darknet if her agent failed to pay a ransom of $300,000 (£270,000).
She was allegedly kept captive until Herba found out she had a 2-year-old son.
But questions have cropped up over her account of events.
A shopkeeper in the town where she was allegedly held said she saw Ayling and Herba laughing and joking together while shopping.
On Good Morning Britain, she responded to questions from Piers Morgan about her time in captivity by saying she was not joking and laughing as the shopkeeper described, and that she didn’t try to escape because she thought her captors would track her down and kill her if she did.
Both British and Italian media have questioned how her captors allegedly injected her in the arm with ketamine, a horse tranquilizer, at the time of her abduction as she was wearing a thick leather jacket at the time.
And responding to allegations that she went to breakfast with Herba before he released her at the British consulate in Milan, she said she saw him as her savior. It was the “Romanians,” she said, who were her real captors. No Romanian suspects have yet been found.
She reportedly told Italian police that the shoes and tracksuit she was wearing when released were given to her before she left the house, but when they asked her why she was seen by a shopkeeper buying the shoes, she admitted she had gone out to buy the shoes. Police asked her why she lied, she broke down in tears, saying, “I don’t have a reasonable explanation,” according to The Sun. When Morgan grilled her about why she lied to police about shoe shopping with Herba, she said she didn’t lie, but merely “brushed it off.”
“Unless you were in my position and went through what I went through, no one can tell me how I should have behaved with a kidnapper, or how I should be reacting now,” she told him.
Now she has signed with a London-based agency to give talks about her experience for money, and is reportedly going to write a tell-all book about her experience titled “Six Days,” which is set to be released next spring.
Michal Herba’s lawyer, George Hepburne Scott, said in September there was “a real risk that the entire case is a sham,” according to the BBC.
“This case has a unique set of anomalies which might lead to the conclusion that the Italian authorities have been duped and that their process has been abused,” he said.
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From NTD.tv
