The hearing before the judges of the Court of Appeal of Brescia for any replies on the request for review of the sentence of life imprisonment for Olindo Romano and Rosa Bazzi for the Erba massacre. Then there will be the council chamber for the decision. The President of the Court said so.
Today, in Brescia, the spouses’ defenders in the Court of Appeal discussed the requests for review of the sentence that sentenced the couple to life imprisonment for the Erba massacre on 11 December 2006.
Video of the Erba massacre, curious people queuing to attend the hearing
Confessions that were induced by the defense because Olindo Romano and Rosa Bazzi, the victims’ neighbor, were not in a mental condition to sustain in questioning as established by defense consultants in the documents attached to the request for review. The lawyers would also like to hear from a Tunisian who hypothesizes that the massacre occurred as part of a settling of scores in drug dealing.
Along the same lines, the request for review presented by the deputy prosecutor of Milan Cuno Tarfusser “irritually and without having the right” as claimed by the prosecutor of Brescia Guido Rispoli and the state lawyer Domenico Chiaro according to whom, instead, the couple there is “a cascade of evidence.”
The prosecution has asked that all requests be declared inadmissible, including that of Olindo and Rosa’s guardian, the lawyer Diego Soddu. In the courtroom at the last hearing, in addition to the spouses, who asked not to be filmed, there was also Azouz Marzouk, husband of Raffaella Castagna and father of little Youssef, killed in the massacre. The man claims that the Romano spouses are innocent and that investigations should be carried out elsewhere. Due to the ways in which the victims were killed, with bars and stabs, the Tunisian had spoken of “killers”, of “people who know how to kill”.
Dozens of people queued again this morning to attend the hearing. The same scene was recorded outside the Palace of Justice during the first hearing, in the rain, on March 1st. Among the people in the queue were many people – including young people – who said they wanted to attend out of curiosity.
Some disagreements occurred in the courtroom when one of Rosa and Olindo’s lawyers, Nico D’Ascola, invited the representatives of the prosecution “not to show blatant signs of dissent” during his speech (the magistrates shook their heads) since the defenders, when last March 1st the prosecutor and the state lawyer intervened to ask for the inadmissibility of the request for review, did not make any comments.
The defense casts doubt on Frigerio’s testimony, ‘false memory’
One of the defenders of Olindo Romano and Rosa Bazzi, Nico D’Ascola, has returned to attack the testimony of Mario Frigerio, who survived the massacre of 11 December 2006 and died years later. Frigerio, who recognized Olindo a few days after the massacre and in the courtroom, initially from the hospital bed, had spoken of a dark-skinned person and the couple’s defense, making use of the advice of some experts, insists in saying that that of Figerio it was a “false memory”.
According to the lawyer, in December 2006, when he recognized Olindo Romano from the hospital bed as the attacker, he had reached “the peak of his cognitive deficit”. He was “brain-damaged” due to the injuries he suffered and the carbon monoxide poisoning caused by the smoke from the fire that broke out in the Erba courtyard. The lawyer Fabio Schembri spoke of “anterograde amnesia” at the basis of the false memory of the survivor of the massacre.
Frigerio, when he was able to be heard, initially spoke of a person “with olive skin”, according to Schembri “of Arab ethnicity”. A few days later, on December 26 he said, as reported in the documents: “The person I saw in the face was a person known to me. It is my neighbor named Olindo. I recognized him immediately, but then I removed it because I didn’t want to believe it and I wanted to delete everything.”
Defense, the dynamics of the massacre incompatible with the presence of the couple
The so-called new evidence is “incompatible” as regards the dynamics with the presence of Olindo Romano and Rosa Bazzi at the scene of the Erba massacre. It is one of the cornerstones of the defense of the spouses sentenced to life imprisonment for the massacre. Among the “new evidence” is the fact that the neighbor, Valeria Cherubini, among the victims, was killed in her home and not fatally shot on the floor below her and then died in her apartment, as reconstructed in the sentences . “The rescuers could not have failed to see” the spouses once they intervened, the lawyer said.
Legal Castagna, they would just like to see the truth reaffirmed
The Castagna brothers would only like to “return to normality and see the truth reaffirmed”. This was said by the lawyer Massimo Campa, who defends the brothers Pietro and Giuseppe who lost their mother, sister and nephew in the 2006 Erba massacre. Azouz, who maintains the innocence of the Romano spouses? “We have already spoken about Azouz and we have prosecuted him,” said the lawyer upon his arrival in Brescia. For them “it would be painful to be here. They would just like to see the truth reaffirmed and to preserve a beautiful memory of those who are no longer here”, he concluded.
Azouz Marzouk, ‘many things don’t add up’
Azouz Marzouk, who lost his wife and two-year-old son in the Erba massacre, explained upon his arrival in Brescia for the review hearing for Olindo Romano and Rosa Bazzi: “I’m fighting this battle for everyone, I can’t say if I have had enemies, I lived in peace with everyone.” The man, who maintains the innocence of the spouses, underlined: “I have read the papers, I have seen the path of these years which confirm that something is wrong, there are many things that do not add up”.
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