“I am seriously ill, I have full-blown AIDS and a sarcoma. Being able to get treatment is my right and yet for two years no one has ever visited me. I am not a serial spreader. I just underestimated the consequences of the disease when I was still well.” The one asking for help, from the Rebibbia prison, is Claudio Pinti, the 40-year-old locked up in the penitentiary of the capital after the definitive sentence for having infected his partner with HIV, who later died in 2017, and also having infected his new girlfriend. The truck driver from Montecarotto has never admitted his responsibilities and now he is raising his alarm about his health conditions.
As reported Republicthe man has started a hunger and thirst strike in protest. “Pinti is sick,” said lawyer Massimo Rao, “the last time he was visited in prison was two years ago. For more than a year and a half we have been fighting a battle for house arrest because his health conditions are absolutely incompatible with prison. We say it, but so do several official expert reports ordered by the prosecutor’s office and the court. And the Supreme Court says it, having ruled very quickly on our appeal against the revocation of house arrest last year.” The prosecutor’s office also gave a favorable opinion on granting house arrest. “The conclusions reached by the experts seem unequivocal, but for a year and a half we have been going from postponement to postponement.”
Pinti was arrested by the Ancona mobile squad in June 2018, a month after his then girlfriend Romina Scaloni discovered she had contracted the HIV virus following unprotected sex. Giovanna Gorini, Pinti’s first partner, with whom he had a daughter he hasn’t seen for three years, had died just a year before, but Pinti hadn’t thought to inform his new girlfriend of his health status. His justifications: “Giovanna knew I was HIV-positive, but we underestimated it. And Romina was the one who asked me to have unprotected sex.” The judges haven’t believed him so far, and now the 40-year-old has more than 10 years to serve, while a new hearing before the surveillance court is scheduled for next week.
