Italian justice sentences can sometimes be a conviction, regardless of their result, for the time it takes to arrive. In the case of the writer Roberto Saviano (Naples, 45 years) have been 17 years after the facts, a wait that has destroyed him in encouragement. The author of Gomorrah (2006), Book Superventas and then series that brought to light the most hidden face of La Camorra, was waiting with a craving on Monday the resolution of the second instance trial of the case that has marked his life: the unusual threat of death against him and the journalist Rosaria Capacchion 2008.
Since then, and he was 29 years old, his life became hell, that same night the police took him out of his house and has lived hidden with permanent escort (and had it since two years before). However, so far justice had not clearly concluded, in the second instance, that this announcement was what it was, a direct threat with the aggravating man of the mafia method. “I have stolen my life, and I have let it steal,” Saviano said bitterly to journalists, after recovering from an unstoppable crying attack after listening to the sentence.
He is now 45 years old and in recent times he has given signs of having reached its limit and was very dejected. For its part, Rosaria Capacchione, veteran ex -portraine of the Napolitano newspaper The morning65, who was also in the room, has been more grim in words: “I am too old to get excited (…). This is not over yet, the sentence of the cassation remains (equivalent to the Supreme Court in Italy), but from the historical point of view of the reconstruction of the facts it is an end point.”
After a first annulled sentence, a transfer to another court, a new trial, and five postponements for various reasons to reach the second sentence, as medical certificates of the defendant’s illness when the view came, finally the ruling has confirmed the first degree sentence of 2021, of a year and a half in jail for Bidognetti, and one year and two months for their lawyer. Beyond the penalty, the decision has above all a huge symbolic weight, given the criticisms and buses that have surrounded Saviano these years in suggesting that the victim became or sought prominence. For example, the ultra -rightist leader of the League, Matteo Salvini, current vice president of the Government, has said several times since 2017 that he would like to take away the escort. Saviano has distinguished himself in recent years for his criticisms of the Giorgia Meloni Executive and from the Italian right he has always seen him hostility.
The writer, who was in the room waiting for the sentence very nervous, covering his face with his hands, has collapsed when he heard the verdict, around half past four in the afternoon. They have been moments of great emotion, in the silence of the room only the writer’s sobs were heard.
Saviano has embraced his lawyer, has hid his face against him and has cried on his shoulder. I couldn’t stop. All his suffering, his life in escape, the existence of Paria living hidden, they came over him. “I want to ride a motorcycle, I want to walk …”, he then told reporters, knowing that that is still a difficult desire to comply, because the sentence only gives him reason, but nothing changes. The condemnation of La Camorra, the mafia organization of Naples and its region, Campania, is still standing. “The victory is in the cars, but my life has been shattered, they have stolen it and I have not been able to manage this. Now my body must be protected, there are those who for years have said that I did not need an escort,” he said. That is why he has accused “a part of the policy that, for years, has argued that it was all false, a lie, an operation.” “I hope that with this victory they understand how they have been complicit,” he said. “They have sustained the criminal strategies of those who believe that the escort is a privilege, when it is a drama.” However, with the same background sadness, he has said he does not know how he will face his life from now on: “It is a victory for others.”
Many years ago, the writer has confessed in interviews that if he had known what he expected he would not have done it, but so far he has always displayed a heroic resistance, turned into a symbol of the fight against the mafia and brave journalism, taking out a successful writer career. However, in recent times he has transmitted symptoms of fatigue, that his conviction already weighed too much. A few days ago he confessed in an interview that once tried to commit suicide, although he narrated it tragicomically, because the attempt caused him diarrhea, and finally gave up.
This trial has become an obsession for him, to the point that in an article published Monday in the Corriere della Sera He has confessed: “This sentence is the most important of my life.” On several occasions the writer has criticized the slowness of justice, “involuntary complicit of mafia organizations”, which thus know that “delays transform the crime into a low risk investment,” he repeated today in his text. “Regardless of the verdict, my life has been crushed,” he concluded.
Between lines, Saviano showed with very hard words that he has come to blame for what happened: “In the background, it was I who has not wanted to subtract from this madness. I have chosen to stay, tell, resist. I am on the bench of the accused, I had to go to this state of things. I have not had the strength to protect myself.” He ended with advice to journalists who take care of mafia that evidences the loneliness that he has felt these years: “Do not do it alone. Do Red. Do not put your body at stake. You do not become illusions.”
At least the sentence has proved him right, because there was the possibility that he turned to the first sentence. But the judges of the Court D’Appello of Rome have confirmed the facts: on March 13, 2008 in the room of the great Spartacus process against the camorra, with 115 accused and the flat major mafia of the Casalesi, the lawyer of Bidognetti read a text in which he pointed to Saviano and Capacchione as responsible for the result of the process if there was final journalists A signal to the clan hitmen of what was the strategy to follow. It was, according to the first sentence, a “precise strategy” to silence them and condition the judges themselves when issuing a sentence. The Santonastaso lawyer challenged the court and requested the transfer of the trial claiming a media pressure and the fact that the published information had conditioned the Prosecutor’s Office.
“16 years of process are not a victory for anyone, but I have the proof that the camorra in a courtroom, publicly has given its interpretation: that it is the information that is afraid of them,” Saviano reflected. “Now we have the official evidence that the bosses, with their lawyers, signed a proclamation in which they put in the objective who reported their criminal power. And they did not attacked politics, but journalism, insinuating that journalists would have considered responsible, and said my name and that of Rosaria Capacchione, responsible for their convictions. It had never occurred in court, nowhere.”