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The investigating judge of Castrovillari, Carmen Lodovica Bruno, did not validate the arrest of ten Pakistani citizens ordered by the District Anti-Mafia Directorate of Catanzaro as part of the operation against gangmastering called “Master”. The request for the application of precautionary measures was also rejected: the judge ordered the immediate release from prison, “if not detained for another reason”. The suspects are accused of illicit intermediation and exploitation of labor and of crimes related to the management of migratory flows.
The defense’s objections to the danger of flight
The defense team, made up of lawyers Andrea Garofalo and Andrea Ponzo, both from the Castrovillari Bar, during the validation hearing contested in particular the existence of the conditions required by article 384 of the code of criminal procedure for the adoption of detention.
The lawyers focused on the need for the danger of escape to be “concrete, current and specifically referable to the position of the individual suspect” and cannot be automatically deduced from the seriousness of the charges, foreign citizenship or the abstract possibility of going abroad. The defense pointed out the absence of conduct indicative of an escape plan, contrasting it with elements of stable roots in the territory.
The defense’s deductions were confirmed in the decision of the investigating judge, who, while recognizing the seriousness of the circumstantial framework presented by the prosecution, considered the risk of escape to be non-existent. This assumption, he noted, “must be based on concrete circumstances specifically referable to the individual suspect and cannot be merely presumed on the basis of the crime title”.
Excluding the current risk of recurrence, the documents have been sent
The judge for preliminary investigations also excluded the current danger of recurrence “in consideration of the significant time that has passed since the facts and the absence of recent elements indicative of the persistent operation of the suspects in the sector of illicit labor intermediation”.
At the same time, having noted that some of the disputed cases fall within the jurisdiction of the district judge, the investigating judge declared, according to what was reported by the defense team, her functional incompetence, ordering the transmission of the documents to the public prosecutor insofar as she is competent.
The lawyers Garofalo and Ponzo expressed “satisfaction” with the decision, highlighting how “the provision reaffirms the need for any limitation of personal freedom to be based not only on the seriousness of the disputes, but on the rigorous verification, case by case, of the conditions specifically required by law”.