Renato Vallanzasca, the former boss of the Comasina gang detained for more than 50 years and with a "never-ending sentence", is moving from the Milanese prison of Bollate to a care facility with sentence deferral under house arrest. This was decided by the Surveillance Court of Milan , accepting the request for sentence deferral for a serious form of cognitive decline , presented by the lawyers Corrado Limentani and Paolo Muzzi, with the favorable opinion of the Attorney General's Office.
The same deputy attorney general of Milan, Giuseppe De Benedetto, explained in the hearing of September 10 that «the diagnosis of dementia has been confirmed, there is a clear incompatibility with detention in prison and the time has come to modify the detention condition, to be carried out in the facility that has made itself available».
The hearing was also attended by the former protagonist of the Milanese mafia of the 70s and 80s, 74 years old, who was sentenced, among other things, to four life sentences also for murder. Judge Carmen D'Elia (the other judge is Benedetta Rossi) had gone over all the reports, including those of the penitentiary medicine service, which in recent months have given an account of Vallanzasca's conditions, no longer self-sufficient . Conditions that produce "paranoia, nocturnal delusions", "aphasia" and that have led him to fall out of bed and be hospitalized several times.
"His conditions do not even make him understand the meaning of the punishment," the defense had written in black and white. A neurologist from the prison medicine service had reported at the end of July that the "conditions are hardly compatible with the prison regime," that the 74-year-old "has completely lost control" and that he must be transferred to a facility "for Alzheimer's patients." Even the doctors from Bollate in a final assessment highlighted that he is "disoriented in time and partially in space," with "inappropriate behavior" and "poorly collaborative."
Lawyers Muzzi and Limentani had spoken of a disease that first manifested itself "in January 2023" and in "rapid and progressive worsening", with "the prison environment worsening his condition". And the defense managed to gather the availability of the "largest Veneto facility that deals with Alzheimer's and dementia patients, linked to the Church", in the province of Padua. For Vallanzasca, before the summer, the Court had reactivated the award permits in a therapeutic community, while in May 2023 the Surveillance Court had rejected a similar request for deferral of sentence, but at the time a place of treatment had not been identified.
(Unioneonline/D)
