He ended up in prison withcharge of attempted murder for having run over with his car the man who had reported him as part of an investigation into gangmastering. But almost three years later the Prato court acquitted him for not having committed the crime. Now for those 5 months in cell and 6 under house arrest the Court of Appeal of Florence has recognized a a 61 year old Pakistani manassisted by the lawyer Stefano Belli, compensation for unjust detention amounting to 80 thousand euros.
The story
The story began in February 2017 when the man, together with a compatriot, was arrested for attempted murder of a Moroccan who had reported them as his exploiters after an accident at work. The man he was abandoned by the “corporals” in front of the Prato hospital and said that he had fallen from a tree while working in the fields. A few days after that episode the Moroccan was hit by a pirate car in Galciana.
It looked like a road accident but the Moroccan said he recognized the two Pakistanis he had reported in the fleeing car. The two ended up in prison.
From there the story of Ahmed Gulzar begins. The Prato Prosecutor’s Office requests an evidentiary hearing which, however, is never carried out because in the meantime the prosecutor in charge of the investigation is transferred. The trial comes with the crime downgraded from attempted murder to personal injury. The Pakistani was released from prison after that the investigators will ascertain thanks to the telephone cells that on the day and time of the accident he and his compatriot were in Impruneta and not in Galciana. During the trial the Moroccan exonerates the Pakistanis and says he was wrong. So in October 2019 the man was acquitted for not having committed the crime.
Compensation
Seven years after the arrest, the Florence Court of Appeal, chaired by Francesco Bagnai, awarded the compensation. «The accusation against Gulzar – the judges write – was based on a photographic recognition made by the offended person during the preliminary investigation phase. But the same offended person during the trial denied that he was one of his attackers and admitted that he was wrong: on the other hand he had described his attacker as tall and thin while Gulzar has a different build and is portly.” .
A first application for unjust detention was rejected in November 2021: the judges had accused Gulzar of a sort of “guilty inertia” in defending himself given that during the guarantee interrogation he had made use of the right not to answer and for not having asked underwent an evidentiary incident to disprove the photographic recognition. However, the lawyer Belli did not give up. And he did appeal to the Supreme Court.
In December 2022 the supreme judges annulled the order and referred it to another section of the Court of Appeal of Florence. The decision that recognized the Pakistani’s reasons came in January. The Supreme Court explained that making use of the right not to respond does not affect the right to compensation for unjust detention. The Tuscan judges explain that the compensation must be recognized even if “his choice to make use of the right not to respond remains difficult to rationally explain”.
For the 221 days spent in cell and the 120 days under house arrest the compensation was quantified at 66 thousand euros: for each day in prison the sum of 235.82 euros must be paid and for each day of house arrest approximately half: 117.91 euros. To the 66 thousand euros must also be added the cost of the damage resulting from the fact that the precautionary measure deprived his family (he had four young children when he was arrested) of their main source of income. This brings us to 80 thousand euros.
«The error – explains the lawyer Belli – is physiological in human affairs as in trials. What is pathological is not wanting to recognize the error and indeed deny it, as happened when we presented the first request.”
