«If you are convinced of the your innocence you have the strength to carry on, you don’t think about 24 years. I always thought about the next day. If you believe in yourself and have principles, you find strength, if you don’t believe in yourself you either commit suicide or change your life.” Interviewed by Bruno Vespa on Rai 1 for the program “Cinque Minuti”, Chico Forti actually reiterated what he has been saying since 1998: that he was not the one who killed Dale Pike, as the US judges who sentenced him to life imprisonment believe.
The return to Italy
After returning to Italy, the former Trentino television producer is serving his sentence in Verona prison. Bruno Vespa joined him here for an interview whose first question was exactly how one lives in prison for so many years in the belief of being innocent. Then Forti focused on the differences between imprisonment in America and that in Italy. «In Miami everything is based on punishment, here I learned about values that I hadn’t found in 24 years: human values, relationships, respect. In Miami the prisoner is humiliated, the principle is that if you are inside prison you have done something and you deserve to be punished. TO Rebibbia and here they welcomed me like a king, with a lot of respect: the first person who welcomed me told me ‘there’s the commander who wants to talk to you’, I thought it was someone from the penitentiary and instead Schettino (the former commander of the Costa Concordia ed) and tells me ‘Chico you are my hero’… They made me a spaghetti all’amatriciana: all you see is either San Vincenzo or it’s my cell mates, I arrived from the United States with nothing, not even socks »
The relationship with Giorgia Meloni
Then the question on president of the Council Giorgia Meloni, who welcomed him as soon as he returned to Pratica di Mare: a meeting that sparked a storm over the advisability of welcoming the prime minister to a person convicted of murder. «On March 1st I received a call that has my penitentiary turned upside down because they told me ‘Come on, you have a call from the White House’.” The first person to contact him, the former sailor said, was the Italian ambassador who would have revealed to her that he was with the US president Joe Biden. Immediately afterwards Giorgia Meloni’s voice: “Go back home”.
The mother and the possibility of leaving prison
In addition to reconstructing the moments in which he knew he would return to Italy, Chico Forti then spoke about the relationship with his mother, who he was able to see again after 16 years thanks to a special permit (also in this case a hail of controversy with the union of the SPP penitentiary police who said he was “saddened” by the speed with which it was granted). “My mother he is my rock, my strength, my energy. Seeing her again was wonderful.” Finally Bruno Vespa asked him if he imagines what his new life outside prison could be like, if the opportunity materializes. «I have been ‘frozen’ for 24 years but my emotions and the desire to live have not changed. I hope I can do all the things I want again; taken out of the freezer, they’re fresh”
Selvaggia Lucarelli: «Pitiful»
The journalist also spoke on the interview Selvaggia Lucarelli with a long comment on Twitter: «I don’t know if it’s more pitiful a) Forti’s story about being welcomed by RE in prison b) the story about how Schettino, who in prison they evidently still call “the commander”, asked to see him to tell him “you’re my hero”. In practice, a murderer gloats over the fact that a man who escaped while a ship sank and sucked its passengers into the sea is proud of him C) the spaghetti dinner in prison, a common practice in all prisons in the country for all prisoners. Vespa laughing asking not if he regrets having killed a man for sinister reasons of money, but if he will go back to surfing. TO SURF. (note that the murder for which Forti received a life sentence took place on a beach) All underlining the drama of the murderer Forti sent back to Italy without even a sock.”
