The defense of Olindo Romano and Rosa Bazzi will begin speaking on April 16th in the trial in which the requests for review of their life sentences for the Erba massacre are being discussed. The hearing was postponed and it was the defense in particular that asked for the postponement to adequately respond to the prosecutor and the attorney general.
The Erba massacre on 11 December 2006: Olindo Romano and Rosa Bazzi were convicted for that massacre (four dead, including a two-year-old child and one seriously injured). But the couple’s lawyers have asked for a request for a review of the trial, pointing to new evidence, in their opinion, which could lead to an 18-year acquittal in the massacre. The attorney general instead speaks of a “cascade of evidence” against the spouses.
Many people lined up to enter the court, including many young people: “We are here out of curiosity, we have been hearing about it for years.” Olindo and Rosa have been in prison since January 2007. The couple initially confessed and then recanted.
The PC, a cascade of evidence on the Romano spouses
Brescia prosecutor Guido Rispoli spoke in court about “a cascade of evidence” against Olindo Romano and Rosa Bazzi. “A cascade of evidence that I believe is impossible to overturn with this review process”, said the magistrate who also added that he found it “hateful to try to involve the Castagna family, the injured parties of a horrendous crime”.
Rispoli argued that, contrary to what the defense claimed, which would change the dynamics of the Erba massacre, Valeria Cherubini, neighbor of the victims and wife of the super witness, Mario Frigerio, was not fatally shot in her apartment upstairs compared to that of the massacre but while he was fleeing, as the sentences reconstruct. “There was no attacker in the house, and Valeria Cherubini in a state of unconsciousness due to the blow she had suffered, she had gone up to her house, her den to take refuge”, where she died, as said by the consultant in the first instance . Rispoli contested that in the scientific consultations at the crime scene of the defense of the criminologist Roberta Bruzzone, methodologies were used that did not exist at the time of the facts. “The bloodstains and the crime scene are elements already in the possession of the previous judges and had already been fully analysed.”
An organized crime regulation is “absolutely unlikely” to explain the massacre, according to the Brescia prosecutor. “I have to escape from the second floor, I’m going to stand in a closed courtyard, with the car far away; the weapons have been barred and a small knife. Then kill a child, for what reason?”, “I’m sending someone to do something this kind for an infamous life sentence like everyone else is, but this one even more so?”, asked the magistrate who recalled how in an interception of the precautionary custody order that brought Raffaella’s husband and Youssef’s father to prison, two of the victims, Azouz Marzouk, the man showed no concern for himself after the massacre: “These are the best days of my life”, he said aboard a car with two other people a few months after the massacre.
The state attorney: “Frigerio had no false memories”
The state lawyer Domenico Chiaro wants to report the Erba massacre and has accused the requests for review “without reasons” of “manifest inadmissibility”.
Those presented by the defense of Olindo and Rosa to ask for a review of the trial on the Erba massacre “are not new facts from an evidentiary point of view” according to the State lawyer, as are the wiretaps which “do not rise to the dignity of evidence”. As regards Rosa Bazzi’s alleged mental deficiency, “there is a suspicion that there was an interest” on the part of the accused in responding incorrectly to the consultants. She does not know where Brazil is, in Spain, she replied. “And Olindo” initially appeared to have no remorse, then the retraction. Give him the Oscar at this point.”
For the state lawyer there was “no false” memory in the testimony of Mario Frigerio who was the first to mention the name of Olindo Romano and who was seriously injured in the Erba massacre. “He said it three times,” the magistrate said. His statements do not change, they do not lose pieces”, as claimed by the defence. Then prosecutor Guido Rispoli spoke on the merits of the defence’s consultancy.
Chestnut: Azouz’s words offend the victims
Giuseppe Castagna, relative of three of the victims of the Erba massacre, contacted by telephone this morning, criticized the words of Azouz Marzouk, husband of his sister Raffaella, killed with her son Youssef. Castagna defined Azouz Marzouk’s statement “I am fighting for everyone” as “offensive for the victims but also for us who have defended the truth in recent years”. “Azouz throughout his life, before and after the massacre, has always and only fought for himself – he added – First he left Raffaella alone to face the neighbors and defend her son, then he fought to best monetize his status as victim”.
Azouz Marzouk: “I’m excited, it’s a revenge”
“They are innocent, justice has not been done,” said Azouz Marzouk arriving at the Palace of Justice in Brescia. “We are getting part of a revenge – he said -. The drug trail “that everyone wants us to believe is creating a lot of problems for me now that I am moving here to Italy also to find work”, we must leave it alone.
Erba massacre video, Azouz: ‘That house had nothing to do with drug dealing’
The Erba massacre: why Olindo and Rosa ask for the sentence to be revised
The Erba massacre returns to the courtroom: in the atrocious act of blood – on 11 December 2006 – the young mother Raffaella Castagna, her two-year-old son Youssef, Paola Galli, Raffaella’s mother and grandmother of the child, Paola Galli, Raffaella’s mother and grandmother of Valeria Cherubini house. Mario Frigerio, the super eyewitness who died in 2014, miraculously remained alive.
Azouz Marzouk, Raffaella’s Tunisian husband and father of the child, with a drug conviction, was initially, wrongly, suspected of the massacre.
Olindo Romano and Rosa Bazzi’s lawyers question Frigerio’s recognition of Olindo, the later retracted confessions of the two spouses, the bloodstain of one of the victims found in Olindo’s car which in their opinion would have been contaminated. The couple initially confessed and then retracted.
The judges of Brescia, having heard the defenders, the prosecutor and the civil parties (the Castagna family will not be there) will decide whether to acquit, admit the evidence that the defense considers new or confirm the ‘never end of sentence’ for Olindo and Rosa.
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