TARANTO – The three Taranto fans who ended up on trial at the end of the rossoblu’s derby against Brindisi played last March were convicted and released.
The three, defended by lawyers Andrea Maggio and Claudio Petrone, were acquitted of the charge of interruption of public service, one of the two charges that had been contested by the Brindisi prosecutor’s office: they were instead convicted of violating the Daspo which was already been issued against them.
For two of them the judge imposed a sentence of one year of imprisonment, however transformed into a pecuniary penalty, while for the third a sentence of 1 year and 1 month of imprisonment with conditional suspension was issued.
At the end of the race, a series of weapons were found in the cars of some of them: six homemade bombs, a baseball bat, a plastic pipe and even a wrench. An arsenal that the Digos agents of Brindisi identified on board the vehicle in which the Taranto ultras who were stopped and initially ended up under house arrest were travelling. Shortly afterwards the defenders obtained the revocation of the house arrest which was transformed into an obligation to stay: yesterday at the end of the first instance trial this last measure was also canceled and the three were released.
For the prosecution, that arsenal was proof of the fact that the rossoblu had prepared for the clash with their opponents when they were about to leave the city. The entire match had been characterized by hostile chants between the two teams and at the end of the match the possibility of a clash was particularly palpable.
The investigations of the Brindisi policemen made it possible to ascertain that the rossoblu supporters had already been the recipients of Daspo, the ban on attending sporting events due to other events in the past: according to what was leaked, the suspects would have regularly signed at the police station in Taranto and then they would fly to Brindisi to join the Ionian fans, despite the ban. And so, once the race was over, the police escorted the Taranto fans as they moved away from Brindisi, but suddenly some cars stopped in the center of a roundabout to try to make contact with the local supporters. However, the impressive deployment of forces, arranged and managed by the Brindisi Police Commissioner Giampietro Lionetti, prevented the situation from degenerating.
The police’s investigations, however, made it possible to identify the Lancia Delta in which the four suspects were travelling: the search thus brought to light all the instruments that the ultras kept on board the car.
