The trial on the beatings in the prison continues Santa Maria Capua Vetere (Caserta), which took place on April 6, 2020 – 105 defendants including prison officers, Dap officials and ASL doctors – the testimonies of the beaten inmates who have joined the civil action, as well as the screenings of the shocking videos of the violence that the Prosecutor's Office has extrapolated from the internal cameras of the penitentiary.
And the images shown today during the testimony of the civil party Carmine Di Saverio, a prisoner at the time and now free, blind in his right eye, are particularly violent. Di Saverio is in the social room kneeling and facing the wall, at a certain point an officer with a mask grabs him by the shirt, and drags him across the room, to the entrance door, where there are other officers, including some with helmets, who are furious with the prisoner. "They didn't spare anyone, not even the disabled" says the witness, who then talks about the beatings taken by the wheelchair-bound prisoner Vincenzo Cacace.
With the lawyers of the defendants, as happened with other witnesses, there is instead a clash on the identification, in particular that of the Commissioner of the penitentiary police Annarita Costanzo, accused and considered by the Prosecutor's Office (PM Alessandro Milita, Alessandra Pinto and Daniela Pannone) one of the officials on the field during the extraordinary search that then degenerated into beatings, also because at the time she was on duty at the Sammaritano prison (today she is still suspended).
Di Saverio says that when he was kneeling in the social room he heard a woman's voice say that 'they are good to kneel, like in Mecca', and answering the prosecutor during the hearing he indicates Costanzo; Di Saverio, who however admits in court that he never saw Costanzo on April 6 during the beatings, and therefore that he had only heard her, connects the female voice to the official because another prisoner had told him that Costanzo had hit him "with the truncheon in the social area".
“But you – asks Costanzo’s lawyer, Luca Tornatora – during the interrogation given to the prosecutors a month after the facts, in six hours you never mentioned Costanzo’s name, nor did you ever recognize her after having seen 40 videos”. Di Saverio thus reiterated that he had never seen her, while Costanzo’s lawyer pointed out that there is no video showing the official giving a truncheon blow, so Di Saverio’s statement was denied.
Article published on November 20, 2023 - 20:49