When Marco Zennaro entered his new cell two days ago, after waiting 8 hours in a courtroom security room and an hour and a half journey in a police mobile phone in the 50-degree heat of Khartoum, his “roommates” then told him that they had seen ‘A dead man“; and they took care of him perhaps with more humanity than his escort. It is the first live story that comes from the Sudan prison where the imprisonment of the 46-year-old Venetian businessman, accused of fraud and held in the country for just under eleven weeks, continues.
The dispute concerns a batch of electrical transformers that the Zennaro company sold to its local distributor, Ayman Gallabi, who – surprisingly – had deemed it not in conformity with the contract. Marco Zennaro went to Khartoum in the second half of March to understand the reasons for the protest. Since he was no longer able to return to Italy, passing from a cell of the police station to that of the prison, despite an initial reimbursement of 400 thousand euros agreed with Gallabi, whose body, however, was later found dead in the Nile on 22 May. And despite the Italian ambassador, Gianluigi Vassallo, and the Farnesina are looking for a composition with the final customers of the supply and the Sudanese electricity company Sedc, run by a close relative of General Mohammed Dagalo, vice president of the transitional government in Sudan.
Here is the report that Marco Zennaro managed to get his family to Italy in the last hours: «I stayed 8 hours in the prison of the palace of the court where I didn’t even know I had to go. A little room underground in the dark. Without water or toilet or way of communicating with the outside world. I was told it was to take me to the hotel. But the court decided the opposite: prison. I’m told to get on one 40 people in a tin truck for a 1.5 hour trip through the traffic of Khartoum. All piled up. An oven at 50 degrees ».
«I arrive in prison, I’m afraid – continues Zennaro’s story – I don’t know what awaits me. Nobody knows anything, I have no phone and nobody speaks English. They took me through the murder sector, drug dealers and criminals: a hell of 700-800 bodies piled up close to each other. Eventually they put me in the criminal offenses section with financial justification. There will be 200 people. All my new companions took care of me because they said they saw a dead man. I am hostage to a system without rules. Please take me home to my family. ‘
Alvise Zennaro, Marco’s younger brother, confirms that “Lawyer, ambassador and the foreign ministry are still working to get him out as soon as possible, because his situation remains extreme, both physically and psychologically».
June 4, 2021 (change June 4, 2021 | 12:57)
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