"Only those who have suffered the atrocious pain of losing the life or freedom of their family members can understand how much the silence, which the mayor recklessly withheld, could have prevented the flare-up of wounds that are still lacerating today ".

Andrea and Irene Loddo entrust to their lawyer Ivano Iai all the bitterness and bewilderment for the words of the mayor of Arzana Angelo Stochino following the death of the former fugitive from Arzana Pasquale Stochino .

«The inhabitants of Arzano will remember him for what he left us in his last period of stay in the village - said the mayor Stochino - an elderly man who had reintegrated into the community, attentive and caring with children and adults. He took long walks and cultivated the garden. Pasquale Stochino was a mild person, an assiduous churchgoer».

Can a recent past erase the darker one for which the bandit was convicted?

No one can forget what happened that night. Pasquale Stochino had gone into hiding on August 15, 1972, immediately after the Lanusei massacre. That evening, a group of armed and masked people broke into the villa of Vincenzo Loddo, 71, a doctor from the Ogliastra center.

The house was located on the outskirts of the town. They wanted to kidnap Andrea, the doctor's son, who wasn't at home: the bandits lost their temper and there was a shooting. One of the kidnappers also lost his life (in addition to the doctor, his wife, brother and nephew). Today it is Andrea who speaks, that child of the past, with the anger of someone who lost everything that evening.

«We feel disappointment and profound bitterness for the mayor's statements regarding the death of a former fugitive. They are wounds that flare up again for the victims of very serious crimes , erased from memory, together with the unjustly disappeared, by the words of a representative of the institutions who honors those who have had contempt for the lives of others and for the undeniable and resolute mockery of the State".

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