A little less than two weeks from sexual assaults occurred in Piazza Duomo in Milan against at least nine young women, the young people considered the perpetrators of the assaults were identified and investigated. The victims were surrounded, attacked and harassed just before the countdown. They found themselves in the middle of the herd, pushed from side to side like objects, with hands all over the place, bites and scratches, clothes torn, as well as robbed.
The agents of the Mobile Squad, coordinated by the prosecutor Alessia Menegazzo, the adjunct Letizia Mannella and the prosecutor for minors Ciro Cascone, carried out 18 searches, of which nine in Turin, one in Bergamo, one in Rozzano and the others in the Lombard capital, at the home of young people between the ages of 21 and 15, both Italians and foreigners and with precedents. And they confiscated cell phones, computer media and clothing, such as jackets and caps. The operation, in which the policemen of the PC section of the Milanese Public Prosecutor’s Office and the agents of the Turin Mobile Squad and the Lombardy and Piedmont Crime Prevention Departments also took part, was made possible after the analysis of the video footage of the surveillance cameras (a special “face recognition” software was also used), videos and images finished on social networks and on the web, and after the stories of witnesses and victims. Victims who yesterday were heard again until late in the evening by investigators and investigatorsi: they recognized their attackers from the still images, but also through the clothes found this morning in the blitz, and retraced those dramatic moments. They have suffered, as they have been defined in recent days, “horrible violence” and have been treated, is the synthesis of their descriptions, as “rag dolls” and “objects”.
“I hope justice is done for us and for all the other girls who were harassed that night,” commented one of the two German students targeted, while the mayor of Milan Giuseppe Sala he apologized on his behalf and on behalf of the city and announced that the Municipality will be a civil party in the trial.
The investigation, in which the crimes of group sexual violence, robbery and injuries were contested, cannot be ruled out that it may soon expand: other episodes of robberies and pickpocketing reported and which also concern the previous days are being examined December 31 and, therefore, the number of suspects (currently 12) could increase as well as that of the young women targeted.
According to a first picture that emerged from the investigation and the depositions of the girls, there would have been no preordained plan or a single direction.
Divided into different groups, on New Year’s Eve, the suspects would have poured into Piazza Duomo to meet and join forces. The first victims, in order of time, were the two German tourists, in their twenties, dragged into the crowd, trapped and harassed not far from the barriers and the police. Then, it was the turn of the 19-year-old in a red jacket who was attacked in front of McDonald’s. He told that in the beginning thought it was a robbery and handed her purse to the group who actually abused her until they tore her clothes in several places. At that moment, two friends of the girl intervened, who underwent the same treatment and reported the following day. Shortly after, around 00.45, another young woman who was in the Vittorio Emanuele II gallery was first robbed of her cell phone and then harassed, as were the three friends who tried to help her.
The analysis of the cameras was decisive in the investigations. Investigators, along with colleagues from the Scientific Police, also used sophisticated tracking systems such as facial software (Sari), in particular to compare the recognizable faces from road and safety cameras with those of the social networks on which some of the boys had made comments the next day, and with AFIS (the law enforcement identification system) for those with precedents.
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