CAIRO, MARCH 11 – In the trial underway in Kinshasa against the six accused for the death of ambassador Luca Attanasio, the Italian state – a civil party and for some time engaged internationally against capital punishment – has asked for the sentence for the defendants to imprisonment as an alternative to the death penalty. The request was notified during today’s hearing dedicated to the defense argument. This was learned from the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo where last Tuesday the prosecution of the military tribunal had asked for the death penalty for the five Congolese in prison and a sixth fugitive. “Adding death to death serves no purpose. If not to bring more pain. We are against it, Luca would have been against it”, said the father of the Italian ambassador killed in Congo in 2021 in an interview with Corriere della Sera. “We are against the death penalty. Our Constitution, our civic sense, our Catholic education say so. They are the same principles with which our son identified. Capital punishment will never ease the pain of our family,” said Salvatore Attanasio. “The prosecutor in Congo – he recalled – argued that it was not an ambush or a degenerate kidnapping attempt, as reconstructed initially, but a real execution”. In the event, he observes, there would also be a principal. “On May 25, in Rome, a preliminary hearing is scheduled for two employees of WFP (the UN World Food Program which had organized the expedition during which Luca Attanasio was killed, ed): I trust – concludes the father – that many clarifying aspects may emerge”. (HANDLE).
(ANSA)
