The sisters who died in Riccione, the turning point on Saman, environmental disasters and feminicides: the Italian chronicle of 2022
Twelve months to retrace, also in images, through the news of Unionesarda.itPer restare aggiornato entra nel nostro canale Whatsapp
2022 is coming to an end. A year of successes and momentous events, but also conflicts and tragedies.
A year to retrace, also in images, through the news of UnioneSarda.it.
Here the main news from Italy: the dramatic accident at the Riccione station in which the sisters of Sardinian origin Alessia and Giulia Pisanu died, the flood in the Marche region which killed twelve people including little Mattia Luconi , 8 years old, mother of Urzulei.
And again: the environmental disasters on the Marmolada and Ischia , the femicides of Carol Maltesi, Stefania Pivetta and Giulia Maja . Until the tragedy of the little girl who died of starvation in Milan , after being abandoned by her mother for six days alone at home, of the car crashed into a kindergarten in L'Aquila and the shooting in Fidene .
Finally, the turning point in the Saman Abbas case, with the arrest of the father in Pakistan and the discovery of the body 700 meters from Novellara's home.
First stage: the Italian news
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THE FEMINICIDE OF CAROL MALTESE
On March 20, a man walking in Val Camonica notices four black bags left near a cliff. As he gets closer, he sees a woman's hand. He calls the police who open the bags: inside are the remains, cut into 15 parts, of Carol Maltesi, a 26-year-old who lived in Rescaldina, near Legnano, and had been missing for more than two months.
That is, since, between 10 and 11 January, Davide Fontana, 43, her neighbor with whom she had had an affair in the past, killed her during a hard game by violently hitting her on the head with a hammer while she was tied up and he has a bag on his head . Then he slits her throat with a kitchen knife.
After killing her, he tells the investigators, he dismembers the body with "a hatchet and a hacksaw" . Then he puts the remains in the freezer and tries to burn them in a bed and breakfast barbecue, but fails. Eventually he abandons them in the mountains of Borno (Brescia) during a holiday in a hotel in Boario Terme. He tells the investigators: "I told you everything because I wanted to get rid of this weight and tell the truth".
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On the night between 3 and 4 May in Samarate, in the province of Varese, Alessandro Maja enters the room where his wife Stefania Pivetta and daughter Giulia sleep and kills them with hammers. Then he reaches the room of his eldest son, Nicolò, with the same hammer and a screwdriver. The boy miraculously survives .
The 23-year-old struggled between life and death for four months. In September he finally leaves the Circolo di Varese hospital: «I'm ready to start my new life, even if it will be difficult to forget that horror».
The father, who in the first interrogations spoke generically of economic problems, after an initial period in the psychiatry ward, was transferred to prison to await trial.
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THE CAR ON THE L'AQUILA ASYLUM
On 18 May, a car crashed into the garden of the Primo Maggio kindergarten in L'Aquila , killing a child, 4-year-old Tommaso D'Agostino , and injuring five.
The owner of the car, a 38-year-old woman, got out leaving her 12-year-old son on board and forgot to activate the electronic handbrake. He had engaged only the gear, then disengaged for play by his son.
The woman is under investigation for vehicular homicide and abandonment of a minor.
According to the Public Prosecutor's Office, it wasn't just his fault: even an adequate fence and a different management of the asylum car park could have prevented the tragedy.
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It was 3 July when a large sheet of ice broke off and collapsed on the Marmolada along the ascent route to the summit. The phenomenon causes a flow of debris and ice that overwhelms two groups of hikers along the route at that moment.
A total of eleven victims: Filippo Bari, Paolo Dani, Tommaso Carollo and Liliana Bertoldi, Davide Miotti, Erica Campagnaro, Gianmarco Gallina, Emanuela Piran and Nicolò Zavatta, as well as Czech tourists Martin Ouda and Pavel Dana.
Only the day before, the heat record had been reached on the glacier, with over ten degrees. A climatic and atmospheric condition of total imbalance that triggers the phenomenon.
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THE GIRL DIED OF STUFF IN MILAN
On 15 July Alessia Pifferi, a 37-year-old woman, leaves her one-and-a-half-year-old daughter, little Diana, at home in Milan . He returns six days later, condemning the little girl to a terrible death.
The little girl remained in the camping cot in which her mother had left her , in the apartment in via Parea with the windows closed and very hot due to the high summer temperatures. The little girl was killed by prolonged dehydration, aggravated by the scorching July weather. According to the investigators, she had been drugged with benzodiazepines .
The mother had gone to Leffe, in the Bergamo area, to find her current partner. She had told him that she had left the child with her sister.
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THE SISTERS INVESTED IN RICCIONE
On the morning of 31 July, a high-speed train passing through Riccione (Rimini) station hits and kills Alessia and Giulia Pisanu, two sisters aged 15 and 17, residing in Castenaso (Bologna), daughters of a businessman from Senorbì, Vittorio Pisanu, who moved to Emilia in the 1990s to start a moving company.
The two girls had spent the evening in Riccione, like many of their peers . Then they were accompanied to the station to return home.
A few moments before the tragedy they were seen trying to cross the tracks : first one of the two got off the tracks, then the other tried to bring her back to the platform. But when it was already too late. The impact is inevitable.
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On the evening of 15 September, during the flood that devastated the Municipality of Barbara (Ancona), the fury of the flood snatched 8-year-old Mattia Luconi from the arms of his mother, Silvia Mereu .
Mereu's parents, from Urzulei, had emigrated to the Marches where many family members had already moved over the years, having left Sardinia in search of fortune.
For days we look for little Mattia , with hopes fading by the hour. The child was found lifeless eight days later in a field in Trecastelli . A worker at a country kindergarten in the area notices the little body in the mud on her way to work.
Mattia is the twelfth victim of the massacre.
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It is five o'clock in the morning on Saturday 26 November when the heavy rains hitting Ischia cause a landslide which, from Mount Epomeo, hits the Municipality of Casamicciola Terme .
A wave of mud, earth, debris that invests and kills everything in its path.
Twelve people remain under the rubble . Eleonora Sirabella (31), her boyfriend Salvatore Impagliazzo (31), Mariateresa Arcamone (31), Maurizio Scotto Di Minico (32), his wife Maria Giovanna Mazzella (30) and little Giovanni, just 21 days old. The entire Monti family, Gianluca (37), his wife Valentina (37) and their three children Michele (16), Francesco (11) and Mariateresa (6). And Nikolinca Blagova Gancheva (60).
The controversy erupts over a law approved in 2018 by the Conte government , which would have favored building abuses on the island. Between reckless management of the territory and the devastating effects of climate change, the tragedy is announced.
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TURNING POINT IN THE SAMAN CASE
November 16th saw the turning point in the case of Saman Abbas , the 18-year-old who disappeared from Novellara (Reggio Emilia) on the night of April 30th 2021 after refusing an arranged marriage . After a year and a half on the run, his father Shabbar is arrested in Pakistan . A few hours after the arrest, the body that beyond any reasonable doubt belongs to the girl is finally identified, in a ruined farmhouse 700 meters from the family home.
Shabbar is indicted following investigations by the Reggio Emilia Public Prosecutor's Office and the Carabinieri in cooperation with his wife, Nazia Shaheen, still on the run, and three other relatives, currently in prison in Italy: they are his uncle Danish Hasnain, his cousins Ikram Ijaz and Nomanhulaq Nomanhula. They all have to answer for premeditated homicide in competition, kidnapping and suppression of a corpse. The trial in Reggio Emilia will begin on 10 February 2023 .
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On 11 December, in the Fidene district, north-east of Rome, a man, Claudio Campiti, enters the outdoor gazebo of a bar, closes the door and begins firing a pistol while a consortium meeting is being held.
Three women die instantly : Sabina Sperandio, 71, Elisabetta Silenzi, 55, and Nicoletta Golisano, 50. The fourth victim, after days of agony , is Fabiana De Angelis, hospitalized in very serious conditions.
The motive is problems with the Valle Verde consortium, a complex of villas in the province of Rieti, with which Campiti had been at war for some time. He had spewed all his hatred into a blog, up to the fatal decision. Not having a firearms licence, he had managed to get a pistol from a shooting range, leaving without returning it.
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THE PHOTO GALLERY: