Ongoing Mega-Trial on Prison Violence at Santa Maria Capua Vetere

The mega-trial on the violence that occurred in the Santa Maria Capua Vetere prison on April 6, 2020, continues, with 105 defendants including prison police officers, officials from the Department of Penitentiary Administration (Dap), and doctors from the Caserta Local Health Authority in service at the penitentiary, and almost 200 civil parties, almost all of whom were detainees at the time of the events. But the shocking accounts of punches, kicks, baton hits, and insults do not always correspond to findings and acknowledgments of the defendants. The victims continue to report from the witness stand what they have suffered, like the 33-year-old Ghanaian Seth Owusu, who speaks of beatings and racially motivated insults. However, the accounts must be verified through videos or photographic recognition; and it is here, at the proof of the facts, that often the testimonies turn out to be imprecise, either because of the long time elapsed from the events with the memory that is less strong, or because the victims remain generic and do not indicate agents by name and surname, as in the case of Owusu and other witnesses heard in these last hearings; or because they are contradicted by the defendants' defenders especially through video frames. This is the case of the witness Giuseppe D'Ambrosio, from Puglia, who in court yesterday recognized numerous agents, all defendants, who would have beaten and offended him, in particular Pasquale De Filippo, Angelo Bruno, Nicola Falluto, Michele Vinciguerra, Francesco Merola. D'Ambrosio reported that on April 6, 2020, he was imprisoned on the fourth floor, where there are no cameras, and that he was taken out of the cell around 3 p.m., having descended four flights of stairs to the walks in the basement, but the images shown by the defenders of the indicated defendants captured him while descending the stairs from the third to the first floor shortly after 5 p.m., two hours after the time indicated by the witness; as well as for the defendant Bruno, it emerged, as demonstrated by the defender Mariano Gaudio, that he did not have a helmet and baton as reported by D'Ambrosio.