“Giovanni Zara's administrative experience, which lasted just a few months, with his being truly against the clans, caused deep lacerations in Casapesenna, the kingdom of the boss Michele Zagaria, who twice thought of killing him”. Lawyer Domenico Cesaro uses strong words during his speech at the trial, currently underway at the Court of Santa Maria Capua Vetere, in which he is assisting the former mayor of the Caserta municipality Giovanni Zara, the injured party, and in which another former mayor, Fortunato Zagaria, and the same boss of the same name Michele Zagaria are accused of private violence with mafia aggravation. Cesaro retraces the ten months – from April 2008 to February 2009 – in which Zara, then just 33 years old, was mayor of the small town where the Casalesi boss spent his 15 years in hiding undisturbed, ending in 2011 in a house in Casapesenna; Zara was sent home by 13 councilors under the direction – according to the DDA – of Fortunato Zagaria, Zara's deputy, and on the orders of the boss, who did not look favorably on Zara's anti-Camorra policy, "a real conduct of contrast to the clans", which materialized in anti-Camorra demonstrations, interviews condemning the clans given to newspapers. “A policy that infuriated Zagaria – explains Cesaro – who wanted to kill him, so much so that there was a plan for an attack in October 2008 with machine guns and pistols, but it was decided to bring him down politically; the second plan was in April 2009, after the no-confidence vote, and also involved Zara's wife, the journalist Tina Cioffo, but even in this case the boss decided it was better to let it slide”. Cesaro then dwells on what happened on October 2008, XNUMX, when Zara met Fortunato Zagaria and the municipal councilor Luigi Amato, also a defendant in the trial, at the Casapesenna municipal stadium. The day before, three members of the Casalesi group, part of the massacre wing led by Giuseppe Setola, had been captured, and Zara made a note in which he applauded the operation and hoped for the capture of Zagaria and the other fugitive at the time, Antonio Iovine (now a collaborator of justice); on October 15st the note was published in the newspapers, and in the afternoon, at XNUMX pm, Zara was summoned to the stadium by Fortunato Zagaria. “The latter – recalls the lawyer – threatened him, telling him: 'you're a cuckold, a piece of shit, Michele Zagaria sent you this message'. And again: 'you will end up like Antino Cangiano', a former deputy mayor of Casapesenna who was shot in the leg by the Camorra in 1989, and then remained in a wheelchair until his death, because he had refused to grant a contract to the clan's company". Cesaro also recalls that “Zara, immediately after the elections, went to the DDA making himself available to the prosecutors, and that in one of the meetings, the police official Silvana Giusti, reproached him for not knowing that Fortunato Zagaria was close to the boss. But Zara – adds Cesaro – was very young, and in fact it was Fortunato Zagaria who had identified him as mayor, unable to run because he had already served two terms in office; in fact, he thought he could manipulate him as he pleased and continue to look after the boss's interests. But Zara changed gear, tried to shake up consciences from a general decline, and was brought down."
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