Death of the national guarantor of prisoners, his brother forced to skip the funeral. He cannot leave prison

Ministers, undersecretaries, Calabrian and non-Calabrian general staff of FdI. For the last farewell to the president of the National Board of Guarantors for Prisoners Maurizio D’Ettorewho died on August 22nd, everyone arrived in Locri. The one who was missing, in church as well as at the funeral wake, was D’Ettore’s brother, PasqualeThere was no response to his request to leave the Catanzaro prison.

“He had asked to be able to see his brother’s body and to meet his mother – explains the lawyer Eugenio Minnitiwho has been assisting him for years – but there was not even a response to the request from the supervisory court”.

Even in justice in August, especially on weekends, everything goes more slowly. But the circumstance, it is confessed half-heartedly in Fratelli d’Italia circles, would have caused more than one sigh of relief, especially among the gold-plated ones who arrived in Locri. At the funeral of D’Ettore, who after a past in Forza Italia had formally joined the party of Georgia Melonithere was the minister Charles Nordiothe undersecretaries Wanda Ferro and Andrea Delmastrothe head of the organization of FdI, John Donzelliplus regional councilors and area mayors. For them, it is rumored, the presence of a relative of the Guarantor – wanted despite the many controversies that accompanied his appointment – guarded by agents a few meters away would have been very cumbersome. Just as embarrassing for most is the crime for which Pasquale D’Ettore is serving his sentence: aiding illegal immigration.

The investigation by the Reggio Calabria anti-mafia prosecutor’s office is conventionally called “Leone”. A sordid story of Pakistani and Indian migrants forced to pay up to 18 thousand euros for a residence permit, obtained by D’Ettore and others by exploiting the immigration decree and dozens of compliant entrepreneurs or convinced to be so by men from the galaxy of the Locride clans. For all the defendants, the mafia aggravation was dropped during the various trials held; he has always come out clean from the other investigations in which the Guarantor’s brother has been involved, and he has only a few months left to serve of the only conviction he received. “The end of the sentence is set for October 5”, explains lawyer Minniti. “For months we have been filing a request for house arrest, but the hearing has not even been set”.

Problem: the center-right has made the crime of aiding illegal immigration an obstacle. Translation: no conditional freedom, semi-liberty, sentence reductions or alternative measures. “In reality, he was convicted before the crime became an obstacle, so he should not be subject to this regime,” explains the lawyer, who is fighting the battle on this issue. The president of the College, who had not even spoken to his closest collaborators about his brother’s situation, was following it closely. “A paradoxical situation: a man with no criminal record at his first conviction forced to serve his last day in prison.”

A macabre irony of fate: after a summer in which the controversy over prisons bursting at the seams and suicides reaching record numbers behind bars dominated the stage, the funeral of the president of the College becomes a clear demonstration of the anomalies of the system. And of those alternative measures that exist on paper, would allow the release of almost 25 thousand of the 61,500 inmates in Italian penal institutions, but remain in most cases unexplored hypotheses.