L'defense lawyer of the killer Giuseppe Setola, Paolo Di Furia, to convince the judges of the court of Santa Maria Capua Vetere, claims that "There was no simulation by Giuseppe Setola, the macular hole in the eye emerged with a diagnostic tool, therefore objective". The diagnosis of partial blindness of the ruthless killer of the Casalesi clan, was therefore real. And then, Dr. Aldo Fronterrè, an ophthalmologist from Pavia, did nothing but analyze the patient's status. This is the defense thesis, instead, of the doctor, represented in court by the lawyers Pasquale Coppola and Marco Imbembo, who will have to conclude their arguments in November.
The final phase of the trial involving Setola – known as “O'Cecato” and accused of eighteen murders committed in nine months of being a fugitive between 2008 and 2009 – and the ophthalmologist Fronterrè is thus partially closed. According to the prosecution, the doctor, who allegedly falsely certified the existence of eye diseases in Setola, is in collusion with the killer and consequently exposed the magistrates to analyzing the incompatibility with the prison regime of the patient, allowing the Casal di Principe killer to be placed under house arrest in the Maugeri clinic in Pavia, from where he then escaped on April 7, 2008.
After the very harsh words pronounced in the courtroom by the public prosecutor, now deputy prosecutor Alessandro Milita, against the ophthalmologist, considered by the Anti-Mafia Prosecutor's Office to be the presumed morally responsible for the eighteen victims killed by Kalashnikov shots.
The verdict is expected at the end of November. The defendants' lawyers have focused on the Camorrista's illness diagnosed in 2005 and therefore three years before his escape.
During the closing speech, the prosecutor Milita had requested sixteen years of imprisonment for both the killer and the ophthalmologist. And if for Setola it is a request that has little impact on the tide of life sentences already definitive, for Fronterrè the situation would be very different. According to the accusation of the Anti-Mafia Prosecutor's Office of Naples, the doctor could not have not known what he was doing, but above all towards whom he was doing it. Over the entire reconstruction of the events, the memory of Setola's eighteen victims looms: that, for example, of the immigrants killed in the Castelvolturno massacre, of the courageous entrepreneur Domenico Noviello and of many others.
The ophthalmologist is also weighed down by the story told by Girolamo Casella, the lawyer accused of being the clan's messenger, sentenced to eleven years for external complicity in mafia association. According to Casella, after the killer was captured, a new prison report came out on Setola's eye problems that confirmed Fronterrè's previous diagnosis. At that point, Setola insisted with his lawyers for a new medical consultation. The ophthalmologist accepted the assignment, but with one condition: fifty thousand euros, of which "I brought twenty thousand euros to his office," Casella declared.
Article published on 26 September 2018 - 09:27
