It was August 4, 2016, when the Senate of the Republic gave the green light to the arrest of the sen. Antonio Caridi. The accusation made by the DDA of Reggio was very serious: being part of the reserved component of the ‘Ndrangheta, one of the “invisible” leaders of the infamous criminal organization. May 2026, day 25, the Court of Appeal of Reggio Calabria confirmed for the second time the acquittal of Antonio Caridi with a broad formula. Ten frightening years (with 18 months of preventive detention), lived on the verge of a nervous breakdown, which dragged Caridi from the altars to the dust.
Antonio Caridi, how painful was the road from Palazzo Madama to Rebibbia prison?
«It has been a long and tiring road. The darkest page of my life.”
Listening to the speech he made in the Senate today in defense of his innocence gives me chills.
«My arrest was voted by the Senate, even before the Reggio bill was pronounced. Politics, therefore, chose to send me to prison even before the judges ruled on my lawyers’ appeal, without reading anything of the 6,000 pages (in addition to the various information) and therefore signing the submission of Politics to the investigating judiciary. And rendering a branch of Parliament crippled. The senators of Pd, M5S and Lega voted for my arrest in the Council for authorizations in less than half an hour. But the thing that hurt me the most was the fact that during the work of the Senate, my former colleagues, even if I don’t want to define them as such, were completely disinterested while I was speaking: some were talking on the phone, some were chatting, some were distracted… they had already decided to send me to prison, without even knowing what facts I was accused of.”
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