The Court of Assizes of Imperia has activated the European judicial cooperation channel to understand whether it is possible to continue the hearing of the witnesses in Sweden at trial for voluntary homicide aggravated by abject and futile motives and the suppression of a corpsethat sees in the dock Salvatore Aldobrandi, 73 years old, originally from San Sosti (Cosenza) but resident in Sanremo for years, arrested on 17 June 2023 on the orders of the investigating judge of Imperia, regarding the death of Sargonia Dankha, the twenty-one year old of Iraqi origins, naturalized Swedish woman, who disappeared into thin air from Linköping, Sweden, in the early afternoon of November 13, 1995. To allow the complex judicial process to proceed, the judge decided to cancel the three hearings in April, adjourning the trial until May 20th.
«During the last hearings – states the plaintiff's lawyer Francesco Rubino – the impossibility of having some witnesses come to Italy for various reasons emerged. Among other things, you have to pay upfront and not everyone can afford it. The Court of Assizes has thus decided to activate the channel of European judicial cooperation to understand whether a part of the trial relating to the examination of witnesses can physically take place in Sweden”. The competent court, however, is not yet known and everything will depend on the agreements between the two countries. At the moment, around thirty witnesses remain to be heard, mostly Swedish, before the hearing can be considered concluded. “On May 20th – continues the lawyer – the methods activated within this instance of European cooperation will be known”. There is also the possibility of hearing witnesses via videoconference but as this is a murder proceeding it is important to physically see the witnesses. «Remote videoconferencing – concludes Rubino – is a second viable option, but it is up to the Swedish authority to express itself, based on its own regulations».