Gabriele Natale Hjorth's sentence for the murder of Vice Brigadier Mario Cerciello Rega, who was stabbed to death in Rome in July 2019, has been reduced to 10 years, 11 months, and 25 days. The sentence was ordered in the third appeal trial and is the third reduction of the American's sentence .
The Assize Court judges granted the Attorney General's request to reduce the sentence by five months from the 11 years and 4 months imposed in the second appeal. This decision is linked to the Supreme Court ruling of March 12, which ordered a new appeal hearing, limited to the penalty, declaring Hjorth's criminal liability irrevocable. He has been under house arrest for a year at his paternal grandmother's house in Fregene, on the Roman coast .
And Rosa Maria Esilio, Cerciello Rega's widow , expressed all her pain: « This long trial , characterised by shameful procedural unfairness in confusing responsibilities and motivations for the sake of narrow-minded interests in terms of sentence reductions, has done nothing but add further pain to the suffering for the violent death of my husband Mario », she declared through her lawyer Massimo Ferrandino.
"The trampling and smearing of the memory of a young husband who died while carrying out his duties by some of the protagonists of this very sad legal case, with the complicity of certain members of the press and certain politicians, has only revealed the inhuman face of a false pietism that I reject outright."
At first instance, Hjort and the other defendant, Finnegan Lee Elder, were both sentenced to life imprisonment . That was in May 2021, but on appeal a year later, the sentences were reduced to 24 years for Elder and 22 for Hjorth . A further reduction was granted in July 2024 (15 years and 2 months for Elder, 11 years and 4 months for Hjorth). Today, another reduction was granted to one of the key figures in the murder .
THE CRIME
On the night between July 25 and 26, 2019, Cerciello and a colleague responded to a call about a burglary. Once on scene, the two arrested two people matching the description provided by the victim. A violent struggle ensued, in which Cerciello was stabbed 11 times by Elder in just under 20 seconds on a central street in the Prati neighborhood.
(Unioneonline/L)
