New hearing today in Brescia for the request for review of the trial against Olindo Romano and Rosa Bazzi , spouses sentenced to life imprisonment for the Erba massacre of 11 December 2006 .
After the prosecution's requests in the last hearing, today it was the defense's turn to present "new evidence" to the Court of Appeal of Brescia to convince the judges to reopen the case again after the three levels of judgement .
Olindo Romano and Rosa Bazzi in the days following the massacre in which four people were killed – Raffaella Castagna, her two-year-old son Youssef Marzouk, her mother Paola Galli and her neighbor Valeria Cherubini – confessed to being the perpetrators of the massacre . Confessions which, for the defense, were however induced because the two, neighbors of the victims, were not in a mental condition to support an interrogation as established by defense consultants in the documents attached to the request for review.
According to the lawyer Fabio Schembri, historic defender of the spouses sentenced to life imprisonment for the Erba massacre, before the confessions, "pressure and promises" were made to Olindo Romano and Rosa Bazzi which, examined in light of their mental disorders which emerged from the recent consultations were such as to "coerce their will".
Olindo was told that he would never see his wife again. “Olindo doesn't know the penitentiary system, he doesn't know that a life sentence is not inflicted in five minutes,” said the lawyer. In their confessions he recalled "there are 243 errors".
"At the time - said the lawyer - it was not certain that psychological forcing was made, but at the time the judge knew nothing about the psychopathological conditions of Olindo and Rosa".
Also in the courtroom was Azouz Marzouk , husband of Raffaella Castagna and father of little Youssef, killed in the massacre. The man claims that the Romano spouses are innocent and that investigations should be carried out elsewhere . «I have read the papers, I have seen the path of these years which confirm that something is not right – he specified – there are many things that do not add up». Due to the ways in which the victims were killed, with rods and stabs, the Tunisian had already spoken of "killers", of "people who know how to kill".
A crowd of onlookers had gathered in the queue to attend the hearing since the early morning, the same scene recorded outside the Palace of Justice on the occasion of the first hearing, in the rain, on March 1st.
For the decision of the Court of Appeal of Brescia there will be a postponement "not soon", according to what was explained by the president of the Court, Antonio Minervini. After the conclusion of the interventions of the couple's defenders, the postponement will therefore be communicated.
(Unioneonline/vl)
