Canederli no, controversy yes. The first hug after sixteen years between Chico Forti, the Trentino man handed over a few days ago by the US justice to the Italian one, and his almost centenarian mother was supposed to be accompanied by the main dish of the local tradition: which however was skipped, also due to the delay with which Forti was brought to Trento from Verona prison. On the other hand, the predictions of the day before were respected by the controversies from the left and from the prison officers’ unions which targeted the preferential treatment that the man would have received after his return to his homeland.
The last meeting between Forti and his mother dates back to sixteen years ago, when he was able to meet her under the strict rules of the visiting room of the Miami prison. Yesterday neither bars nor armored glass but the living room of the house where Forti lived before moving to America and getting into trouble. Forti enters, embraces his fragile mother with emotion and caution, “I love you”. She asks to see her room again. They remain face to face for four hours, in an attempt at normality: knowing, and the penitentiary officers are there to remind them, that Forti will then have to return to prison. But also knowing that this time neither the ocean nor the American judges are involved, and that freedom is no longer an unattainable goal.
At seven in the evening, Forti goes out into the street and gets back into the vehicle of the “penitentiary”. Waiting for him below, as when he arrived, there are, together with the journalists, around a hundred sympathisers, people from the committee who had been fighting for years for the return to Italy, and who – like Uncle Giovanni – consider themselves certain of Forti’s innocence. from the murder of the young businessman Dale Pike, for which he was sentenced to life in prison. Now the committee’s goals are a review of the trial or a presidential pardon, but the road for both is uphill. The simplest solution is that Forti can immediately access reward permits, having already served more than ten years in prison, and soon be granted parole.
All this could happen without questioning the American verdict and without giving Forti preferential treatment. Yesterday, a union of prison officers attacked the concerns that the man would enjoy, according to which the extraordinary permission to visit his mother would have been granted too quickly, and above all the head of Justice of the Democratic Party, Deborah Serracchiani, who takes with the photo together with Forti taken in prison by Fdi deputy Andrea Di Giuseppe. «Does Nordio know that the regulation prohibits the introduction and use of cell phones in a penitentiary?», Serracchiani asks the Minister of Justice. «Absolutely nothing abnormal – replies Di Giuseppe – the photo was taken in the registration office and not in the detention area, when I went to the interview with Forti I handed over the phone first.
And I would like to point out that for years I met Forti in the American maximum security prison and I always took photos without anyone being scandalized.”
