«Anyone who saw them had a reaction of revulsion at what happened: people chased and knocked down like that. Horrifying."
The prosecutor of Asti Biagio Mazzeo thus comments on the sentence imposed by his office on the jeweler Mario Roggero for killing two bandits after a robbery on 28 April 2021. For the prosecution, and evidently also for the court according to the sentence, Roggero's sentence was anything but self-defense. In the images mentioned by Mazzeo, which were decisive for the conviction and taken outside the jewelery shop in Grinzane Cavour, in the province of Cuneo, the robbers can be seen leaving the shop and heading towards a car.
A few moments later the jeweler comes out with gun in hand and shoots first at the driver and then at the bandit who was getting in on the passenger side. The two manage to escape but Roggero chases them and one of them is hit and falls to the ground. Roggero then returns to the jewelry store with the gun in his hand.
Yesterday the jeweler received the solidarity of Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini, who phoned him and expressed his closeness. And the prosecutor, from the pages of Corriere, also responds to Minister Salvini: «It doesn't surprise me, for years the minister has had a slogan: that the defense is always legitimate. But here we are beyond even the bordeline case ." " A reaction that occurs after the fact, and outside the shop, cannot be legitimate defense ," underlines Mazzeo.
"There will be someone - he explains - who is more rigorous or less rigorous, when faced with cases of legitimate or presumed self-defense". «But here it is not a question of reasoning by bias - he continues - in this case we are completely outside the case of self-defense. We magistrates do not have the tools to change the laws, which Parliament can do. By inserting justifying and mitigating causes into the penal code, which are not currently foreseen."
Solidarity with the jeweler also came from social media. «I look at social media every now and then - says Mazzeo - and it scares me that so many live by buzzwords, that they are in front of a keyboard, in isolation, with the only company of social media, in fact. Instead of getting information from qualified sources. Thus, the tam tam wins, and by dint of crying "wolf", you read people who write or say: "First I'll shoot then I'll ask". " Politicians should make a greater effort to convey a more rational or responsible message ," he argues.
As for the conviction, he clarifies: «I never feel pleasure when a person is convicted, at most there can be satisfaction if our work has been done well. After that, it remains a sad story to think that a person, if the sentence is confirmed in the next few degrees, will have to serve prison time. But we must apply the law, and put the emotional aspect aside ." And in any case "we must take into account that the minimum sentence for a single murder is 21 years: from the point of view of the sentence, I would say it is mild, taking into account the limits of the law".
On the fact that the jeweler had already suffered a robbery in 2015: «From a psychological point of view it is possible that a person develops a certain desire for revenge, and I would understand it - states the prosecutor - but it is obviously not a justification . And I don't justify it." So some advice to the jeweller: «To question yourself - concludes Mazzeo - and reflect on what he has done: if the Prosecutor's Office and the Assize Court, also made up of lay judges, condemned him, perhaps he should ask himself some questions » .
(Unioneonline/D)