Maysoon Madjidi, the Kurdish activist arrested in Crotone on December 31, 2023 on charges of being a smuggler of the vessel that landed on the beach of Gabella with 77 people on board, remains in prison. The Court of Crotone, which is judging her, has once again rejected the request to change the precautionary measures from prison to house arrest. A request that the defendant herself made during a spontaneous statement to the criminal panel presided over by Judge Edoardo D’Ambrosio at the end of a marathon hearing that lasted over five hours. Maysoon Madjidi, 29, is in prison because she was accused by only two migrants out of 77, an Iraqi and an Iranian, of having been the assistant of the captain, Akturk Ufuk, who confessed and is being tried with an abbreviated procedure. “You accuse me of having helped the passengers during the journey and then you tell me that I am a trafficker because I did not help them disembark but I escaped – said the defendant -. How can I be a trafficker if I was forced to stay with dozens of other people in a basement waiting for the trucks to go and embark us? How can I be a trafficker if, as you also said, I continued to look for money to pay for my trip until three days before departure? I asked for a loan from the Komala party, of which my brother and I were members, to be able to leave”. Maysoon Madjidi, detained since January 1st in prison (she is currently in Reggio Calabria) reiterated her innocence in the courtroom of Crotone where dozens of activists were also present who came to support the Kurdish artist. During the hearing, testimonies were heard from the judicial police officers who arrested the defendant based on the accusatory statements of two migrants who were on board the boat. The lieutenant of the Guardia di Finanza, Gaetano Barbera, at the time commander of the naval unit, answered the questions of the prosecutor, Maria Rosaria Multari, reconstructing the facts and reiterating the validity of the accusations gathered during the investigation. This thesis was contested by the lawyer Giancarlo Liberati who also asked why the Guardia di Finanza was unable to track down the two key witnesses in the trial, despite the defense having provided their addresses, while the Mediaset journalists found them in England and Germany: «We have contacted the general command of Rome for the police cooperation service, but to date we have no knowledge of where they are». The lawyer asked: «is it possible that journalists can find them and the Italian State cannot?». Barbera explained: “The question should be asked to the German police, we communicated everything to Rome which then uses the collateral foreign police body”. The officer was also asked by the president of the Court whether there were videos or photos on the cell phones of the defendants who were analyzed in depth showing Madjidi helping the captain? The answer was negative. D’Ambrosio then asked why only two migrants were interviewed: “We are talking about December 31st – Barbera replied -. It was an activity that the police had to do and that was passed on to us because it was the Rai New Year’s Eve and they had to manage public order. We tried to do the best we could in that case. Afterwards we didn’t interview others because after a few days they left”.
John
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