Naples – “Mario was killed, the investigation by the Rome prosecutors should not be shelved. We want truth and justice for our son”.
Mario's parents Paciolla, the aid worker found lifeless in Colombia in 2020 where he was working for the United Nations, do not give up and are launching an appeal to the Capitoline court to ask that the investigators' activity on the last hours of life of the 33-year-old who was found hanged in the house where he lived in San Vincente del Caguan not be put to an end.
“We never believed that Mario committed suicide, he loved life,” Anna and Pino Paciolla affirmed on the day in which the investigating judge of Piazzale Clodio reserved his position on the new, second, request for archiving advanced by the additional prosecutor Lucia Lotti.
“There are many elements, including scientific ones, that tell us that Mario was killed,” Paciolla’s family added, recalling that, a few hours before the body was found, the aid worker had bought a plane ticket to return to Italy, to go back to his home in Naples.
“He loved others: we have been looking for answers for five years – add the father and mother of the aid worker who took part in a sit-in outside the judicial center in which Articolo 21, Fnsi and Amnesty also participated -. Ours is a path of truth and justice, we are doing it for him”.
During the hearing, their lawyer, Alessandra Ballerini, explained the reasons for asking that the investigation be continued. “We have highlighted all the doubts and inconsistencies that in our opinion lead to a reconstruction of a murder and not a suicide,” the criminal lawyer declared.
There are also scientific data and in the reconstruction of the judicial police there remain many elements of doubt". For Ballerini, "the elements that make us lean towards murder are many: from the forensic medical report to the blood traces. We remember that in this case many elements are missing because the UN security had taken care of cleaning the crime scene, even with bleach. A lot of evidence was made to disappear and therefore we will never know many things".
The investigation into what happened in Colombia, as often happens with episodes involving Italian citizens who die abroad, was immediately complex due to the limitations of the investigative action. The local authorities, after finding the young man's body, spoke of suicide.
A version that however his family has always opposed, asking the Roman prosecutors to do everything possible to arrive at an incontrovertible truth about the dramatic end of the thirty-year-old. Paciolla was found hanged from the ceiling with a sheet, in an apparent suicide scenario.
That day, two Colombian UN officials intervened in San Vicente del Caguan: the local security chief and former army officer Christian Thompson and his boss, Juan Vasquez.
Once inside the house, the two were concerned, for reasons never clarified, to quickly remove objects belonging to Paciolla and to clean the room, washing the floor with bleach. In addition, the two took a mattress and some tools, stained with blood, throwing them in a landfill.
The three investigations opened – in Colombia and Italy and one internal to the UN – were not enough to dispel doubts about what happened. The word now passes to the investigating judge of Rome who will lift the reserve in the coming weeks.
Article published on March 19, 2025 - 20pm
