At 3.02pm Chico Forti crossed the door of number 11 in Piazza General Cantore, a residential district of Trento. It is here, on the sixth floor of an apartment building, that the former Trentino entrepreneur grew up. His ninety-six-year-old mother is waiting for him, Maria Loner, who hadn’t seen his son Enrico for 16 years, when he was still in prison in Florida. Elegant blue dress, worn for a special occasion, mother Maria got to the stove to prepare the lunch Chico wanted: the Trentina-style dumplings. In all these years the old woman repeated that waiting for her child had become her reason for living: a desire that came true after 24 years of detention.
Arriving two hours later than expected
Forti arrived two hours after the scheduled time. Dozens of journalists and cameras, a group of onlookers, a discreet presence of the police were waiting for him since late morning. The “Zinzorla”, a popular bar on the ground floor of the condominium where the Forti family lives, is a constant coming and going, next to it is a newsstand with newspaper posters announcing Chico’s arrival in the Trentino capital.
Childhood friends
There are also childhood friends, who – after saying goodbye to him many years ago while Chico was chasing his American dream – hoped to meet the sixty-five year old’s gaze at least for a moment. It didn’t go like this: the prison police vehicle, which left the Montorio prison in Verona shortly after 1pm, took a secondary road and let the inmate enter the building through a door at the back of the condominium.
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Uncle’s wait and hope
To entertain everyone while waiting for the arrival of Chico, the uncle Gianni Forti, the man who more than anyone in recent years fought first to have his nephew’s innocence recognized (receiving no satisfaction from the stars and stripes justice) then to plead for his return to Italy to serve the rest of his sentence. An operation, the latter, started by the former foreign minister Di Maio in 2020 and completed in recent days by the Italian Government. Gianni, one cigarette lit after another, had a word for everyone, repeating like a mantra that the recognition of the sentence does not equate to an admission of Chico’s guilt.
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The six floors and then the hug with the mother
Around 2.30pm a white Jeep Renegade left Piazza Cantore with officers from the Trento Police Headquarters on board. The signal that Chico would arrive shortly. Another half hour passed, then the Jeep and the prison police vehicle entered the back of the condominium. Gianni Forti immediately joined him, then had to wait a few more minutes before Chico got out of the van. With a smile on his face, he waved in favor of the cameras, and then entered the door of the condominium, with his friends shouting his name to draw his attention. It had been 27 years, since the summer of 1997, that the former entrepreneur had not gone beyond the entrance of that house. From that moment on, only the six floors separated him from his mother’s embrace.
