From 21 June Graziano Mesina is no longer in Sardinia. Captured on 18 December after a year and a half on the run, the elderly former kidnapper and former drug trafficker left his cell in the high-security arm of the Badu 'e Carros penitentiary to be transferred to the Milano Opera prison, the largest in Italy and among the most supervised in Europe. It can accommodate 918 inmates but as of June 30th it welcomed 1,237. The reasons for the decision are unknown.
Mesina, defended by the lawyers Beatrice Goddi and Maria Luisa Vernier, was definitively sentenced to 30 years by the Supreme Court on 3 July 2020. On the run since then, he has found refuge in Barbagia until his arrest in a house between via Nuoro and vico Gennargentu to Desulo. He slept, wore jeans and a sweater, and stood by a stove. On the bed heavy blankets and plastic bags, on the wall a crucifix and a religious image. No cell phone, no TV. On the bedside table some boxes of medicines, other medicines in the backpack and then 6 thousand euros in cash. He had been awakened with a start by two explosions at 2.30 am and then found himself in front of dozens of carabinieri. End of the story. Brought to Nuoro, last May a further sentence was confirmed on appeal in Sassari, in this case 6 years and 8 months, for usury and extortion. Then, a month ago, the move to Lombardy.
Mesina was one of the most famous Sardinian fugitives. Among the best-known fugitives with him were Annino Mele, 71, involved in the feud of Mamoiada and arrested in 1987 (he was convicted of murder and kidnapping, in 2018 obtained conditional release he published some books on detention and 'life sentence); Pasquale Stochino, born in 1934, untraceable since the summer of 1972 because he was accused and then convicted of the Lanusei massacre (five dead), finally arrested by the carabinieri on September 26, 2003 at the foot of Punta La Marmora in the fold of some family members; Giovanni Farina from Horun, escaped from the Siena prison in 1996 and captured in Australia in 1998 (sentenced to 30 years for the kidnapping of the Lombard industrialist Giuseppe Soffiantini, has been entrusted to social services for a few months and writes about prison).
