Self Rosa and Olindo were innocent, who could have committed the Erba massacre? It is a transversal question that has occupied the narrative of innocent and guilty supporters for the past 17 years, since that 11 December 2006 in which the massacre took place in the court in via Diaz which cost the lives of four people, including a child of just 2 years. On the one hand the alternative track of the defense of Rosa Bazzi and Olindo Romanoaccording to which the investigation, at the time, did not explore in a timely and careful manner the hypothesis of a settlement of accounts between gangs of Tunisians and Moroccans for the drug dealing place in the center in the province of Como, on the other the granitic certainty of a final sentence which definitively sentenced the spouses to life imprisonment: only they would have had a motive to kill Raffaella Castagna, the “noisy” and cheeky neighbor, the little son Youssef Marzoukher mother, Paola Galliand another resident of the “ice palace”, Valeria Cherubinian uncomfortable witness together with her husband Mario Frigerio the only survivor, by miracle, of an unprecedented slaughter.
It is also the central question of the new episode Le Iene present: Insidehosted by Antonino Monteleone on 14 December 2023 in prime time on Italia 1 and dedicated entirely to alternative scenarios beyond the Romano-Bazzi: if the couple were victims of a sensational judicial erroras argued by three requests for review of the trial currently under consideration by the Court of Appeal of Brescia (in chronological order the one signed by the deputy prosecutor of Milan, Cuno Tarfusser, that of the spouses’ guardian, Diego Soddu, and the one recently deposited by the defense panel), who is responsible for the Erba massacre?
From Azouz Marzouk to the ignored superwitness Abdi Kais, the common thread that would write another story about the Erba massacre
The motive for the Erba massacreaccording to the accusation against Rosa Bazzi and Olindo Romano, can be traced back to deep neighborhood frictions with the couple made up of the Tunisian Azouz Marzouk and his wife, Raffaella Castagna. A motive too weak, according to the defense, to explain the atrocity of an unprecedented and organized massacre down to the smallest detail. A more than solid reason for the accusation, to the point of pushing the couple to commit one of the most ferocious crimes in our history. On December 11, 2006, the spouses would have gone into action and would have washed with blood – including that of those who had nothing to do with their condominium disputes – years of tension and spite inside that building transforming it into an inferno of fire and horror and getting rid of the “problem” once and for all.
According to the defense of Rosa and Olindo, however, the Erba massacre would be a completely different story compared to what was crystallized in the final sentence against them. The motive for the massacre should be sought elsewhere, precisely in the “war” for the drug dealing square between groups of Tunisians and Moroccans. A story which, according to the lawyers of the two convicted men, would be found in the story of a key witness, the Tunisian Abdi Kais who at the time of the events appeared to be living in the home of Azouz Marzouk, a concrete lead to follow to demonstrate their innocence. Among the arguments of the request for review of the trial presented by the defense is precisely what was argued by Abdi Kais, never heard by the investigators and heard during the defense investigations by the panel assisting the Romano-Bazzis. Kais talked about a possible alternative scenario referring to the hypothesis of revenge for drug issues behind the Erba massacre.
According to his story, the court in via Diaz it would have been a nerve center for drug dealing and at the time of the facts, in 2006, there was apparently an ongoing bitter rivalry, which later resulted in knife attacks, between some Tunisians close to Azouz Marzouk and a group of Moroccans for the control of drug trafficking between Erba and Merone. A few months before the massacre, according to the witness, something serious happened which, according to him, could be closely linked to the Erba massacre: “We had some drug problems with some Moroccans who have us stabbed, to me, Azouz’s brother and two cousins. They also showed up under the house of Azouz Marzouk’s brother with knives and wanted to go upstairs. Obviously the drug trail had to be followed first due to our relationship with other ethnic groups who dealt with drug dealing within Erba (…). When I learned about the massacre on TV, I thought ‘The boys have made some mess with those Moroccans’. It is impossible that Mr. Olindo and Mrs. Rosa, who I know very well, from one day to the next turn into murderers and carry out a massacre that is still talked about today.“.
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