One year ago Marouane Bechir42 years old, well-known Tunisian pusher of the university area, was killed with a brass knuckles. The preliminary hearing judge Alberto Ziroldi sentenced the case Domenico Checchi, the 32 year old from Bologna who killed him, ten years and 8 months in prison with the granting of general extenuating circumstances for voluntary manslaughter and 2 years and 2 months for possession of narcotic substances and illegal possession of weapons.
Domenico Checchi convicted for the murder of Marouane Bechir
Thus ended the first degree of trial for the murder of the 42-year-old Tunisian who on the night between 24 and 25 May 2023 he died in the elevator of an apartment building in via del Borgo di San Pietro, where Checchi lived, after being fatally wounded while he was there. Checchi, assisted by the lawyer Alessandro Cristofori, has always defended himself by claiming that he was brutally attacked by Bechir in his house and that he had to react using the brass knuckles which was equipped with a blade. The defense has always maintained that it was a negligent excess of legitimate defense. But for the Prosecutor’s Office things went differently.
The quarrel and the crime in the condominium in the university area
The victim was already known to the police and had several criminal records for drug dealing, he had also served periods of detention at Dozza. That evening she was in Checchi’s house, al seventh floor of the condominium in via del Borgo di San Pietro, precisely for drug issues. Together with him his partner, Checchi was also at home with his girlfriend. One had exploded around one in the morning violent quarrel which had alarmed some condominium owners, so much so that they called the police.
The pusher rescued on the landing of the building
Then the screams of the woman who was with the victim, who dragged the 42-year-old from the landing on the seventh floor into the elevator, to try to ask for help. But when police officers arrived on the scene they found Bechir dying and the woman still in the elevator while she tried to swab his wounds.
The murderer’s defense: “I defended myself from an attack”
Checchi, wealthy family behind him and university studies in agriculturehad a drug record for which he had been tested, it was initially taken to prisonbut after the warrant interrogation the investigating judge Nadia Buttelli ordered house arrest, recognizing in her initial version of the facts a lucid and plausible story.
The Prosecutor’s Office contested voluntary manslaughter
However, the investigations by the police and the prosecutor Anna Cecilia Maria Sessa continued, acquiring testimonies and images from video surveillance cameras in the area, contents of the phones and exchanges prior to the crime. They were found in the defendant’s house a few doses of heroin and a teaser. The Prosecutor’s Office therefore contested the voluntary homicide, in addition to the possession of narcotics and the illegal possession of a weapon, and the prosecutor had asked at the hearing for a sentence of 16 years, with the reduction for choosing the abbreviated procedure.
The version of self-defense did not hold up
The gup has some sentenced to ten for the murder with the granting of generic mitigating circumstances, but the version of self-defense did not hold up. No civil party had been filed for the victim. The reasons will be filed in 90 days, then the lawyer Cristofori is ready to appeal. Meanwhile Checchi, in the courtroom with his mother and girlfriend, remains under house arrest.
