Bologna, 29 June 2024 – An investigation delicatethe one on the sexual violence reported by a tenant of the occupied building in via Carracci. It is complicated by the fragility of the victim and the hostile context in which the carabinieri are working. At the center of the military’s investigations at the moment are the victim’s husband, a thirty-year-old Tunisian, and the friend who allegedly chased her through the rooms of the building and raped her after him. The latter is said to be a man of North African origin, who recently moved to Bologna and, like the couple, is living in the illegal ‘Social condominium’. On both investigations by the Carabinieri of the Bologna Centro company are underwaycoordinated by the prosecutor Giampiero Nascimbeni, in the file opened for aggravated sexual violence. Soldiers who immediately collected the complaint of the young mother, who lived in the occupation together with her two small children. She and the children have now been taken in by the Pris of the Municipality, while the husband – also Tunisian, 20 years older than the woman – is still among the tenants of via Carracci.
The news the story obviously aroused political reactionswith the leader of the League in the Municipality Matteo Di Benedetto who, after having expressed “total solidarity” with the thirty-year-old, speaking of “episodes unworthy of a country that wants to call itself civilized”, returns to ask to proceed “with the immediate eviction of the illegally occupied property. From day one we asked for his release, precisely because where there are illegal occupations, illegality reigns and episodes like these can occur without control. Now the serious event has happened: there are clear political responsibilities for which someone will have to answer. It must be clear to everyone where occupations are allowed, these things can happen, as happened in this case. Not freeing them means accepting this possibility: this is why we are and will always be against it. Now let’s proceed immediately with the eviction.”
This, while in recent days the residents of the area have sent multiple reports to the police, resulting in complaints denouncing an ‘impossible coexistence’ with the occupants. Not only (and not so much) the twenty families with children permanently housed in the three Acer buildings by the Plat collectiveeven more so the subjects who gravitate around it, “foreign subjects unknown to the authorities”, as written by a citizen who, among the recipients of his report, also included the Minister of the Interior Matteo Piantedosi.
Acer, owner of the complex, composed of three buildingsoccupied last October, had at the time filed a complaint for the invasion with the Digos. And now, with a file opened in the Prosecutor’s Office for invasion of land and buildings, entrusted to the prosecutor Stefano Dambruoso, the fate of the ‘Social Condominium’ is sealed: the certainty is that the occupants will not be able to remain there for life, not only because of Acer’s right to regain possession of one of its properties (which was also a candidate to become a public student residence), but also because of the risks associated with the old age of the building, the possibility of collapses, and the problems with the systems, which are not up to standard.
The eviction will come sooner or lateras was already the case for the historic housing occupations of the former Telecom and via De Maria, always animated by the same collective, which was previously called Social Log and, after the pandemic, changed its name to Plat. But it is clear that solutions will have to be found, at least temporary ones, for families or mothers with minors. And they will not be immediate.
