All the crimes were already time-barred before the first-instance verdict. For this reason, the Court of Appeal of Cagliari swept away the four convictions inflicted on some carabinieri of the Calasetta station accused of various illicit and false acts, but also of having put drugs in the cars of a young man in order to arrest him. The provisional payments, the advances on compensation that the first-instance judges had inflicted on the defendants, were also revoked.
The sentence
Twelve years after the contested facts, with a five-line ruling, the Court presided over by Judge Massimo Poddighe declared that "no action should be taken" against Marshal Ivano Iacobelli, as well as against the soldiers Massimo Porta, Carmelo Favara and Emanuele Carrus, because the crimes have been declared extinct due to the statute of limitations.
The appeal judges largely accepted the appeals of the defense, canceling the sentence of 6 and a half years of imprisonment inflicted on the former commander of the station (defended by the lawyers Patrizio Rovelli and Michela Teti), that of 4 years and 3 months to Porta (assisted by Alessandro Corrias), the 4 years of imprisonment for Carrus (defended by Fabrizio Rubiu) and the 3 and a half years of Spavara (assisted by Gianluca Aste and Corrias).
The long process
The facts that gave rise to the investigation date back to 2012, when the Calasetta barracks ended up at the center of an investigation by the then deputy prosecutor Gilberto Ganassi (the first-degree trial was then led by his colleague Andrea Vacca). According to the reconstructions of the public, some soldiers allegedly committed forgeries and numerous irregularities to carry out arrests against some young people from the Sulcis town. In the first-degree, the convictions were for drug-related crimes and for forgeries. The sentence also ordered provisional amounts of 10 and 25 thousand euros, against the civil parties assisted by the lawyers Massimo Graziano and Maria Chiara Leone. The other five defendants who ended up on trial had already been acquitted, or declared acquitted due to the statute of limitations.
