The latest “arrangement” by Marco Zennaro, the Italian businessman held awaiting trial in Khartoum, Sudan, resembles a cage: a concrete square with a grate instead of the ceiling and the sun beating almost all day on the heads of the occupants. “He’s boiling in there with about twenty other prisoners,” his brother Alvise informs from Venice. The outside temperature touches 50 degrees in the hottest hours, “and at night I think the minimum does not drop below 40” he adds, distressed.
The family’s only relief is the ability to communicate with him via mobile phone. The judicial affair of the CEO of the electrical material company founded by his grandfather has become complicated with the passing of the weeks; and the preventive detention, between postponements of hearings and new investigations, is lengthening like the queue of the allegedly injured. In March, the local distributor of the Venetian company had contested a batch of electrical transformers worth around one million and 200 thousand euros that Zennaro, 46, had sent to Sudan after having been awarded, through Gallabi & Figli, a tender in 2020. Zennaro left for Khartoum with the idea of being able to resolve the dispute, but found himself under house arrest in a hotel on the very evening of his arrival.
On April 1, the issue seemed to be resolved through a (somewhat compulsory) refund of 400,000 euros and Zennaro was preparing to take off for Italy, when other reports of fraud arrived and the new arrest was triggered. No longer in a hotel room, but in the crowded security rooms of a couple of police stations (without even a cot available) and, for a few days, in prison.
To expect, as a whole, almost another 1.5 million euros are local electricity companies, customers in some cases of the Gallabi family, one of whose members, Ayman, was found drowned in the Nile on 22 May. Lead partner of the plaintiffs is the Sudanese Electric Company, chaired by a close relative of the number 2 of the National Transitional Council, General Mohamed Dagalo, at the helm of the country after the 2019 coup.
When a couple of weeks ago the director general for Italians abroad, Luigi Vignali, was sent by the Farnesina to parliamentary in Khartoum, the Sudanese authorities opposed him with other complaints, relating to other contracts which, regardless of the position of the Sudanese Electric Company, would prevent Zennaro’s release.
The Farnesina protests and insists, through Ambassador Gianluigi Vassallo, that he be granted house arrest or at least a more respectful treatment of human rights, pending the due judicial clarifications. The patriarch of Venice, Francesco Moraglia, asked for the intervention of the apostolic nuncio to Sudan and Eritrea, Luis Miguel Munoz Cardaba; and the mayor, Luigi Brugnaro, that of Mario Draghi.
Between noon on Saturday and yesterday, on the waters of the Grand Canal, the rowing companies organized a new event: 24 rowers took turns for 24 hours in a solidarity relay. Because Marco, crammed into a torrid cell where only Arabic is spoken, may feel less alone. In fact, during the various transfers he lost his only companion, an Iraqi professor, with whom he could speak in English.
June 13, 2021 (change June 13, 2021 | 21:27)
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