"I have nothing in life but the pride of having, for years, pursued an ideal and of having done things that gave me very strong gratification, to be of help to many people who arrived in Riace fleeing wars, poverty ".
Mimmo Lucano, after being sentenced to 13 years and two months of imprisonment for managing the reception of migrants in his Riace, is moved by all the solidarity received.
"The thing that hurts the most is to think that people may have doubts about me. I'm not afraid of punishment," he says, "I've spent my whole life chasing ideal redemptions." "These doubts hurt my soul. - continues -. I didn't do this for an ulterior motive and the prosecution says so too. I have spent it all the way ".
The former mayor of Riace admits that he did not expect it. He believed he would be acquitted even though he feared that request made by the prosecution, seven years and eleven months. Instead, the judges even doubled the sentence. The heaviest accusation (the reasons will be filed in 90 days) is that of conspiracy: "If I am guilty - says Lucano - they also had to put together with me the Ministry of the Interior and the Prefecture of Reggio Calabria because they were asking me for very high numbers for a small village to which I said yes for my mission. And how does the State repay me? By giving me 13 years and 2 months ".
But also that of embezzlement, that is to have enriched himself with public money: "The same Prosecutor - he explains - said 'no this mayor had no economic motivations on a personal level, but he did distractions'. But here lies the essence of the model Riace. With the money we also did integration. I could not accept that the reception was unilateral, that it only concerned the refugees. I thought it must also concern the inhabitants of the place ".
THE REGIONALS - Lucano runs for a seat in the assembly as the leader of "Another Calabria is possible" in all three constituencies in support of the regional presidential candidate Luigi de Magistris, even if the Anti-Mafia Commission defines him as an "unpresentable candidate ”On the basis of the provisions of the Code of self-regulation for parties and the Severino law.
“We are more determined than ever to have Lucano on our list - said the mayor of Naples -. We are united by a human bond, a universal brotherhood. Lucano is the antithesis of the 'Ndrangheta. Perhaps his only fault is being too human. He will certainly be acquitted on appeal and in any case Mimmo's sentence hurt me as a former magistrate and as mayor ”.
THE EVENT - Today six hundred people have come from all over Calabria to make their closeness to the "Global Village", the symbol of the "Riace model", where, in the center of the town, there are the artisan shops opened over the years by refugees arrived and remained in this hilly village 7 kilometers from the sea.
Even if, from the moment of Lucano's house arrest, few migrants remained. Becky Moses, the 26-year-old Nigerian who died on 27 January 2018 in a fire in the San Ferdinando slum where she had found refuge after being forced to leave Riace for the closure of the Cas project, left. "For two years - says Lucano to the audience who listens to him - he lived in Riace and was happy. And where did he go? In the slum, in the world of the invisible where he met death. For 4 months his remains remained in the morgue. . They called me and now she is in the Riace cemetery, the only place that has tried to give her dignity when alive and dead ".
(Unioneonline / D)
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