A Verona military prosecutor said
Thursday he had opened an investigation into a group of
allegedly rogue Carabinieri accused of drug pushing, extortion
and torture in Piacenza.
The prosecutor, Stanislao Saeli, said that there appeared to be
evidence of military crimes in the charges laid by Piacenza
prosecutors Wednesday.
The Carabinieri are a paramilitary police corps and as such are
under the ultimate command of the defence ministry.
The six Carabinieri were arrested Wednesday and a barracks
belonging to the paramilitary police impounded in the northern
city of Piacenza.
"Nothing that went on that barracks was legal, they were
out-and-out criminals," said Piacenza Chief Prosecutor Grazia
Pradella about the Carabinieri involved.
"We are confronted by shocking crimes, especially if you think
they were committed by police officers," she said. The men have
been charged with trafficking and distributing narcotics,
receiving stolen goods, extortion, illegal arrest, torture,
grievous bodily harm, embezzlement, abuse of office and fraud.
Pradella said the most serious of the alleged crimes had been
commited during the coronavirus lockdown from early March to
early June.
She said that "while the city of Piacenza was counting its many
dead from the coronavirus, these Carabinieri were supplying
drugs to pushers who had run out and were confined to their
homes because of the anti-COVID norms".
Defence Minister Lorenzo Guerini, who is the ultimate commander
of the Carabinieri corps, said "these are unheard of crimes, but
they must not be allowed to tarnish the Carabinieri's reputation
as a whole". He said the corps was "made up of 110,000 men and
women who work daily with an extremely high sense of the
institutions, on the side of citizens".
According to an intercept, the incriminated officers said "we
have formed a criminal gang boys...in other words, we've made a
pyramid...we are untouchable". They allegedly said "we have
found another person, under us. This person here goes to all
these pushers and tells them: 'Watch it, from now on, if you
want to sell the stuff, you sell this stuff, otherwise you don't
work!', and we'll give them the stuff!".
In another intercept, a civilian under investigation said the
way one of the Carabinieri had commandeered a car "reminds me of
a scene out of Gomorra". Piacenza prosecutors said the
Carabinieri had behaved like "fully fledged, hardened
criminals".
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