India's Maoist rebels release Italian hostage

India's Maoist rebels on Thursday released an Italian hostage held for more than three weeks after authorities agreed to release Maoist prisoners, officials in the eastern state of Orissa said.
Paulo Bosusco, 54, who worked as a tour operator, was captured March 14 from a forest in Orissa along with an Italian tourist, Claudio Colangelo. Colangelo, 61, was released March 25.
"Bosusco has been brought to a government guesthouse in Bhubaneshwar," a spokesman for Orissa's Home Department said.
Italian Ambassador Giacomo Sanfelice di Monteforte appeared before local television channels at the guesthouse with Bosusco who said he was happy to be a free man.
"I am fine, I am well," Bosusco said in Oriya. The Italian has been working as a tour operator based at the seaside town of Puri for over a decade.
"They did not cause any harm. I will never forget this experience in my lifetime," Bosusco said. The Italian said he would be leaving India soon. "But my love for the Oriya people will never finish," he added.
Dandapani Mohanty, a mediator appointed by the Maoists, said Bosusco was handed over to him by the rebels in a forested area of Kandhamal district, around 200 kilometres west of state capital Bhubaneshwar early Thursday.
Bosusco was freed after the Orissa government agreed to release five of the seven jailed rebels demanded by the Maoists.
They included Subhashree Panda, the wife of Sabyasachi Panda, the leader of the rebel group that abducted the two Italians. Subhashree Panda was released from jail Tuesday after her acquittal by a local court on charges of involvement in a shootout between the Maoists and police in 2003.
The fate of another hostage - Jhina Hikaka, an Orissa state assembly member of the ruling Biju Janata Dal party, who was abducted by another rebel group at around the same time as the Italians - remained uncertain.
The rebels have refused to release Hikaka until 30 jailed rebels from that group are released.
"We in the state government are very relieved," Orissa Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik said about Bosusco's release. He appealed to the Maoists to release Hikaka immediately.
More than one-third of India's 626 administrative districts are affected by the Maoist insurgency, which Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has described as India's biggest internal security threat.
The Maoists say they are fighting for the rights of tribal, landless and poor people in some of the country's most impoverished regions.
The two Italians were the first foreign nationals to be kidnapped by the Maoists, whose usual targets are politicians, government officials and policemen.