Welcome to the palace of illegality. On Via Ogliastra, in the Is Mirrionis neighborhood of Cagliari, just steps from the entrance to the Santissima Trinità hospital, there is a building illegally occupied and transformed into a den for drug dealing and prostitution. A building seized from its rightful owners, who, in addition to fighting a battle for several years, must live with enormous pain: on February 16, 2023, Venerato Sardu, 75, was killed in his home by an illegal tenant, who was later sentenced to thirty years for murder. And his three children are unable to regain possession of the building despite complaints, requests for intervention by law enforcement, petitions, and press articles. A symbol of illegality further confirmed by the attack on February 25 of the Rete 4 television crew of Fuori dal Coro by two squatters.
Thus, despite the laws that are supposed to protect the owners of a private building, Isabel Sardu, her sister Daniela, and her brother Renzo, have been unable to find justice for themselves and their father. For three years, they seem to have entered a tunnel from which they can't escape. Some remain entrenched in their apartments, despite eviction orders. Some manage to re-enter other homes by knocking down walls or creating gaps. And some have even reached and occupied Venerato Sardu's home, desecrating a place that not even their children had the courage to revisit after their father's murder. And installing bars on the windows and bricking up the front doors has been of no avail. Because the squatters, partly to carry out their illegal activities (reported and reported to law enforcement several times), tear down everything, even creating gaps in the walls just to continue using the building.
Sardu's three children are tired. "We even put iron bars on the windows. So to get in, they broke down the exterior wall overlooking the internal garden, which had been transformed into a giant landfill, and from a bathroom in an apartment they created another hole in the wall to occupy our father's house," Isabel Sardu recounted in a video. Paradoxically, when she went to verify whether the incursion was real, she found one of the occupants in the bathroom, complaining about her presence.
In short, the building is a land of conquest for a host of thugs. The syringes scattered everywhere testify to the presence of drug addicts as well as dealers. And then there are those who use the homes to run prostitution rings. Inside and outside, waste of every kind. The three children of the man killed in 2023 have repeatedly asked for help: they simply want full control of the building back. However, complaints and petitions (over a thousand signatures have been collected from local residents who experience hardship and problems due to the presence of these individuals, who also create disorder in the neighborhood) seem to have fallen on deaf ears.
"Three years is a long time, and we're tired," Isabel Sardu continued. "February 16th marked the third anniversary of the discovery of our father's body. Chance would have it that I had an appointment with a potential homebuyer. But unfortunately, what's happening in the building on Via Ogliastra is beyond all imagination. I've found the exterior wall that overlooks the internal garden, and I'm saving the condition of this small, broken green space."
An unsustainable situation that has been going on for far too long. Shortly after the murder, the police also conducted an anti-drug operation, arresting two people in the building itself. There were also searches, but nothing changed. And it even came to the recent attack on the Mediaset television crew from the Rete 4 program, Fuori dal Coro, by two squatters: first they threw objects, then attempted to damage a camera. The journalist and the crew then called the Carabinieri. Three patrol cars from the company's mobile radio unit arrived, and the road was closed to traffic. The two squatters instead called 911 because they were feeling unwell and complained of illness. This is just the latest in a truly absurd story.