A former policeman from Cagliari who fought in the Donbass next to pro-Russians on trial for terrorism. Luigi Frau, 51 years old, up to 2007 in service as a canteen clerk in the Mobile Department of Cagliari, on June 27th will have to appear before the judges of the Assize Court of the Sardinian capital.
The man is accused of enlisting and training for terrorist purposes in eastern Ukraine, now a theater of war but where a "low intensity" conflict has been fighting for years between Ukrainian forces and pro-Russian separatists.
Today Judge Roberto Cau sent the Sardinian fighter to trial, accepting the request of the Deputy Prosecutor of the District Anti-Terrorism Directorate Emanuele Secci.
According to what was reconstructed by the Digos of Cagliari, Frau would have been in the Donbass at least four times between 2015 and 2019, actively participating in the conflict. The man already in 2015 had ended up in an investigation by the Ros on Italian mercenaries engaged in the Donbass. Stopped at the Bologna airport and heard by the investigators, he declared that he had never fought.
But his presence in the Russian-occupied territories of eastern Ukraine has now been confirmed by bank transactions, documents, manuscripts and computer equipment seized from his home in Cagliari. The man has been living for some time in a country house with sparse furnishings and no comforts: a kitchen, a cot for sleeping and a PC that he needed to read up on what is happening on the pro-Russian separatist front.
In April 2021, Frau was met by an expatriation ban, because the investigators suspected that he wanted to return to the places of the conflict. A “lone wolf”, Antonio Nicolli, the head of the Cagliari Digos, defined him. Who now, according to the accusations, was "studying" to hone his skills as a guerrilla.
(Unioneonline / L)
