Fascist salute at the funeral, 22 defendants also acquitted on appeal

(ANSA) – SASSARI, OCTOBER 17 – The Court of Appeal of Sassari has confirmed the acquittal of the 22 CasaPound exponents accused of having performed the Roman salute at the end of the funeral of the university professor Giampiero Todini, in the churchyard of the church of San Giuseppe , in Sassari. The funeral was celebrated on 2 September 2018 and once the funeral was over, a group of participants lingered in the churchyard to say farewell to the professor with the Roman salute: in front of the coffin, many had stretched out their right arms and responded “present” to the recall “comrade Giampiero Todini”. A gesture that became public due to a video published on social media by the teacher’s son, Luigi Todini, and immediately went viral. That video reached the Prosecutor’s Office, 22 of the participants in the greeting were identified and brought to trial on charges of having broken the Scelba law which, in art. 5, punishes “anyone who, with words, gestures or in any other way, publicly carries out demonstrations usual to the dissolved fascist party”. The first degree sentence was an acquittal for everyone, “because the fact does not exist”: the judges accepted the thesis of the defense lawyers, including Pierluigi Olivieri, Antonio Mereu, Agostinangelo Marras and Bachisio Basoli, according to which the Roman greeting had been made to fulfill the wish expressed by the deceased before dying, and not to praise the dissolved fascist party. A sentence that the Court of Appeal, presided over by Judge Salvatore Marinaro, confirmed today. “The decision on appeal confirmed the robust motivation of the first instance sentence which in turn is now part of a stratified jurisprudence of legitimacy and merit. Episodes such as the one in question cannot constitute a danger for the stability of democratic institutions and much less than the reconstitution of the fascist party – comments the lawyer Antonio Mereu, who defended most of the defendants – With this, the contested fact was brought within the scope of article 21 of the Constitution which guarantees the right to freely express one’s thoughts” . (HANDLE).