Three in the morning. The village is dormant. Here, on the other side of the world, a land of perennial famine on the border with the largest oil dollar factory, there is no public lighting. The roads are impassable dirt tracks in the desert. What cannot be called houses are a heap of blocks, gray and perforated, without windows. The beds are couches, for adults and children. Life is poor and uncertain deep in Yemen. The soul is soaked in blood in a land disputed between misery and oil.

That hiss of death

The silence of the night is only the preamble of the most devastating hiss of the sky, the one that bursts with the pace of death that crashes into the void of darkness. It is October 8, 2016, one of the many nights in "bulk" in the heart of Deir Al-Hajari, a poor village as not even the wildest imagination can describe. Northwestern Yemen, the extreme border of life hanging from nothing. Seven thousand kilometers from the land of the Nuraghi. The supersonic jets, those of the wealthy emirs of Saudi Arabia, are armed with oil and bombs. When they burst into the Yemeni sky, the only defense of those poor "Christs", barricaded in the precarious nocturnal half-sleep, is their hands clasped over their ears. Illusory attempt to muffle the roar that travels over their heads at the speed of light.

Carnage & Trials

Illusion, in fact. Yet another flying attack by the Royal Saudi Air Force, the Saudi Arabian Air Force fleet, leaves no way out. The village melts like snow in the sun under the blows of nefarious bombs. It is carnage. A family of six, including a pregnant mother and four children, is hopelessly torn apart. They all die. Hours will pass before reaching the devastated village. In this devastated land there are no ambulances close at hand, the helicopter rescue does not even know what it is. The first to arrive on site is a Yemeni humanitarian organization, Mwatana Organization for Human Rights, real first aid kamikaze. They try in every way to revive what has already left the earthly life. He just has to reassemble those little creatures now lacking a tomorrow, mowed down by the explosive violence fallen from the sky. Dawn is devastation. Remains of bombs and victims everywhere. Among the rubble, everything appears, including abbreviations and numbers, all deformed by the devastating impact with the ground. Steel sheets, complete with alphanumeric fingerprints, those of the authors of the umpteenth massacre of innocents in the land of Yemen. The removal of those war remnants, marked by identification codes, is not left to chance. In that land plundered by the sky, everyone knows that to stop the war it is necessary to block in every way that arms market that supplies the Saudi coalition from all over the world.

Lethal circuit

A lethal circuit between dollars, oil and weapons, where the perversion of wealth turns into genocide. According to the World Health Organization, 1,439 civilian victims were killed between 19 March and 5 May 2015. Since the beginning of the attacks by the Saudi coalition there have been more than 3,000 dead and 10,000 injured. Twenty million people were left homeless, in the absolute starvation of a famine described as the worst in the world. For that reason, when those pieces of metal pierced by laser-engraved codes reach the United Nations experts there are no frills: those remains of bombs and a suspension ring have a name and a surname: Rwm Italia SpA, the company controlled by the German arms manufacturer Rheinmetall AG, located in Southern Sardinia, right on the slopes of Marganai, on the administrative island of the Iglesias area, under the aegis of the Municipality of Domusnovas. The deal is to make your skin crawl. Rich Germans sell those bombs to wealthy Saudi emirs. Four hundred million euros worth of bombs.

The German business

Germany, for its arms business, however, prefers not to scratch its conscience. The bombs, the ones that devastated Yemen and killed so many innocent people, the Germans produce in poor Sulcis, reduced to a flicker, forced to cling to a lethal weapons factory, with modest interim contracts, provisional as few and without any hefty compensation. The Saudis, on the other hand, the rich emirs of oil, throw the weapons bought by the rich Germans, produced in southern Sardinia, at the poor villages of Yemen. They target hospitals, schools, minibuses full of children and civilians. All with impunity.

The complaint

Until the angels of extreme help take a pen and paper. The European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights, the representative of the Mwatana Organization for Human Rights and the legal representative of the Permanent Observatory on Weapons and Security Policies, do not go to death unpunished. The dossier is as detailed as few, with overwhelming documents and evidence. The accusation is without appeal: the German industry in Sardinia must be criminally prosecuted together with those who have released the authorization to sell those bombs. The envelope crosses the hemisphere, to arrive directly at the Public Prosecutor's Office of Rome. The authorizations issued to the Rwm by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs are under international attack. Humanitarian organizations deem them illegitimate as they are contrary to the rules of domestic and international law.

Outlawed sales

According to the humanitarian organizations, the law 185 of 1990 has been violated. A law that prohibits the sale, transport and transit on Italian territory of bombs and armaments destined for countries that violate the rules of international law in matters of war. The complaint is substantiated. The documents acquired by the Rome Public Prosecutor's Office at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, however, are not sufficient to clarify responsibilities and omissions. It is also perhaps for this reason that the Public Prosecutor is asking for the filing of all the protagonists of this affair.

No archiving

The request to forget forever those deaths in a closet, however, does not go down to the Judge for the preliminary investigation, Roberta Conforti. His is a strong and clear decision: "The request of the Prosecutor - he writes in the judicial documents in our possession - cannot be accepted". Under the Judge's examination, the days of those authorizations for the sale of those bombs to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are over. According to the documents in the hands of the Judge, both the officials of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for the Unit for authorizations for the sale of armaments abroad, and the leaders of the Rwm of Domusnovas would have been aware of the risk that those bombs could have ended up on civilians .

The cornerstone of life

And, then, in the judicial documents he engraves a founding principle of the right to life: "Not even the further argument put forward by the Prosecutor is convincing, namely the purpose of guaranteeing the public interest of maintaining jobs". An assumption that the Judge crushes without half words: the excuse of "safeguarding jobs cannot, even in the abstract, justify a conscious, deliberate violation of rules that prohibit the export of weapons to countries responsible for serious war crimes against civilian populations ". The documents are nailing: "Both the resolutions of the Security Council of the United Nations and of the European Parliament had decided to embargo the sale of those weapons to the states responsible for those crimes". The conclusion is dry: "The request for dismissal is rejected."

Investigate the registry

The provision is without appeal: "the Public Prosecutor proceeds with the registration in the register of suspects of the pro-tempore directors of Uama and of the managing directors of Rwm Italia, from 2015 until the date on which the last authorization was issued to the export". The time allocated to the PM for the new investigations has expired. The file with new evidence could return to the Judge's table in days. The Court, at that point, will have to decide whether those massacres of innocent people, tortured by the German bombs produced in Sardinia, will go unpunished.

(2. continue)

© Riproduzione riservata