San Michele, the mystery of the desecrated tombs: will other burial sites also be opened?

Have other tombs been desecrated to steal gold and precious items? Was it an isolated incident? Or is there a purpose other than theft? These are the disturbing questions that the investigators of the Flying Squad are trying to answer, working on what happened last week in the cemetery of San Michele .

For now, there are four open coffins : a job for professionals, because after the marble slab was removed, the concrete wall was knocked down, the coffin was opened, damaging it, and then the cover was replaced in an attempt to make nothing visible. The desecrated tombs, far from each other, all belong to deceased people traceable to the same family nucleus of Bosnian citizens of the Roma community who have been living in the Cagliari area for many years.

"We appeal to all Sardinians who have a loved one buried in the cemetery of San Michele: check that there is nothing strange in the tomb. And in case of suspicion, contact the police. What happened to us could have happened to other people too ," emphasizes Saltana Ahmetovic, representative of the Roma community in Cagliari.

The hitch

The alarm was raised when someone noticed a coffin partially outside the burial niche, which was left without a marble slab . Almost certainly, whoever planned the robbery inside the cemetery, after having desecrated three coffins, found himself faced with a snag: the group (because the investigators' hypothesis is that several people acted) was unable to put the coffin back in the burial niche, thus leaving traces of the raid .

All the details in the article by Matteo Vercelli on L'Unione Sarda on newsstands and in the digital edition