By: Yassmine ElSayed
CAIRO, Mar. 23 (SEE) - An Egyptian young boy was hailed in Italy after he proved unparalleled courage, saving the lives of 51 students.
Media reports said that the young hero, 13-year-old of Egyptian origin, named as Rami Shehata, was on board a bus whose driver hijacked his own vehicle and threatened to burn 51 children to death to avenge the drowning of migrants in the Mediterranean.
Shehata managed to hide his mobile phone when the driver insisted that all the children hand over their phones to him.
He then pretended to pray in Arabic as the driver made threats and waved a knife, while in reality telling his father what was happening. His father contacted the police who eventually succeeded in freeing the kids.
The schoolchildren were left traumatised after the bus was hijacked on the outskirts of Milan on Wednesday. He was driving them from a sports venue back to their school.
During the 40-minute drama, the children tried in vain to smash the windows with their fists.
They even tried to indicate the numbers 112 – the emergency services hotline – by making the shapes with their fingers and gesturing to passing motorists.
The driver spotted them and ordered them to close the curtains on the windows so they could no longer try to communicate.
He smashed into police vehicles which had set up a roadblock on a highway near Milan, before setting light to petrol that he had doused inside the coach. It burst into flames.
Police smashed the windows of the bus to extricate the children and then arrested the driver.
The coach was burned down to its metal skeleton.
Government officials said on Thursday they would fast-track and pay for the boy’s citizenship application. “The interior ministry is ready to take care of the expense,” an official statement said.
Despite being born in Italy, Shehata is not an Italian citizen, like hundreds of thousands of other children in the same predicament.
Under Italian law, a child born to foreigners on Italian soil does not have the automatic right to citizenship and must wait until they are 18 to apply for it.
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