“How fast can a swallow fly per hour?” “One kilometre.” «How many kilos can a weightlifter lift?» “Eight”. “How many seconds are there in a minute?” “Five”. «Where is Brazil located?» «I don’t know… In Spain». It was February 12, 2019 and Rosa Bazzi was answering questions on a test to evaluate his cognitive abilities. Practically non-existent, according to the story of the lawyers who brought that test to the courtroom yesterday in the Court of Appeal of Brescia, where the possibility of reviewing the trial against Rosa and her husband, Olindo Romano, is being discussed.
It was the second hearing and it ended with a new postponement. «There are a lot of irons in the fire. We will not enter the council chamber today”, explained President Antonio Minervini, postponing the case to July 10 for the replies and the final decision. We will know that day whether or not the Court will admit a new trial for Olindo and Rosa, sentenced to life imprisonment for the Erba massacre of 11 December 2006. There is not the same dignity in the word “massacre” that is found in the names of those who died that evening. So let’s write down those names once more: Raffaella Castagna, her mother Paola Galli, her son Youssef, who was just 2 years old, and her neighbor, Valeria Cherubini, who by chance found herself on the landing of the slaughterhouse together with the husband, Mario Frigerio. Frigerio was supposed to be the fifth victim but the hand that cut his throat could not have known about his carotid malformation. They thought he was dead and abandoned him there after setting fire to Raffaella’s apartment.
But let’s go back to yesterday. Seven hours of discussion in the courtroom to defend the two lifers with evidence that the lawyers – Fabio Schembri, Luisa Bordeaux, Patrizia Morello and Nino D’Ascola – define as “new” and “scientific”, with unpublished testimonies and with various consultancies. To repeat the key points of the review request. That is, that Frigerio, who survived and became an eyewitness to the massacre, was the victim of “anterograde amnesia because he was intoxicated by carbon monoxide”, who named Olindo, creating a false memory, because “taken by the marshal of the Carabinieri of Erba, Gallorini.” The Court was told that Valeria Cherubini’s blood was found on the door sill of Olindo’s car it cannot be the one delivered and analyzed by the prosecutor’s consultant. And then “wiretaps that are missing”, “people in the house of the massacre since the afternoon”, the escape route of the murderers which would be “the terrace of the Castagna house”, if anything the roof but certainly “not the stairs and the front door of the building.”
In short, a life sentence which according to the defense is leaking from all sides; a thousand details of the initial investigation that would be sloppy or a procedural fraud and elements read as evidence that are instead “science fiction hypotheses”. There was one theme, among others, on which the lawyers particularly insisted: Olindo and (much more so) Rosa have no trait – this is the sense – of ruthless killers and their confessions were “extorted” under the threat of separating them from each other forever. «They confess by both doing a generous act, each to save the other, not because they killed. It is no coincidence that we counted 243 errors in their confessions”, recalled Fabio Schembri who had already spoken about this figure in the past. Olindo would be gullible who “insistently asked for the matrimonial cell”. She has “been portrayed as smart” and instead is said to be the victim of a serious “mental retardation” which makes her give those answers to the 2019 test and which – Schembri always says – “does not know how to take a bus, cannot read and cannot write , he doesn’t know how to dial a telephone number…”. Olindo and Rosa were innocent, according to yesterday’s narrative in the courtroom. And also according to Azouz Marzouk, Raffaella’s Tunisian husband“I’ve read the papers, many things don’t add up,” he said, light years away from Azouz who was asking for the death penalty for them. © ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
