Threats to get money from his wife so he can buy drugs.
“Give me the money, otherwise I will kill you and hurt you”: these are the phrases that a woman would have heard her husband repeat on an almost daily basis.
Not only that: he, a 40-year-old of Moroccan origin, also put his hands around her neck on two occasions, telling her that he would hurt her if she didn’t give him the money.
So the man, by instilling fear in her, forced her to give him the money which he then used to buy cocaine.
These episodes would have been repeated in two towns in the Reggio Emilia Apennines between December 2021 and May 2022. Following the woman’s story, who formalized a complaint in which she described the death threats she had suffered, the investigations were carried out by the Carabinieri of Villa Minozzo.
Then the Prosecutor’s Office formulated the charge of extortion and asked for the 40-year-old, who remained at large, to be sent to trial.
In the meantime, however, the story has taken an unexpected turn compared to the heavy premises with which it would have materialized.
There was a reconciliation: the couple, who have children, got back together and now live under the same roof.
The woman, who forgave him, did not appear as a civil party: she had also expressed her intention to withdraw the complaint, but the alleged crime, that of extortion, can be prosecuted ex officio and therefore the criminal proceedings will continue anyway.
The family matter was heard yesterday before the preliminary hearing judge Luca Ramponi.
The lawyer Mario Di Frenna, appointed as the forty-year-old’s trusted defender, asked for the abbreviated procedure for him (which allows a reduction of a third of the sentence in the event of conviction) conditioned by the opinion of his wife.
It will continue in October.
Alessandra Codeluppi
