Always on the wrong side. While much of Italy is questioning the dramatic story that sees Mario Roggero end up in prison, Ilaria Salis manages to anger everyone. With a truly questionable stance via social media. For the MEP who enjoyed the privilege of parliamentary immunity to be released despite the serious charges against her, it is Mario Roggero who needs to be re-educated. For the Strasbourg companion, he is a «white Italian of middle class» while no one gets worked up about «foreigners and the poor».
Salis’s stance is an open challenge to common sense. She simply cannot understand that the jeweler – a profession that evidently annoys her – had just been the victim of an armed assault and everything that happened afterward, with the two robbers killed, was a consequence. Except for Salis and the judges.
Yet there must be a reason why many Italians (not only on the right) consider the sentence unfair and disproportionate. At 72 years old, 15 years in prison sounds like an excessive punishment for someone who defended himself from those who were robbing him while threatening his loved ones. And the victim, if anything, is an honest merchant who suffered a violent robbery, and the culprits of the robbery were the criminals (not “marginalized innocents”). She essentially defends the judicial status quo (which punishes the victim) more than the person who found himself defending his family from armed criminals.
The law must be respected until it is changed. But if a law produces results that people perceive as deeply unjust (punishing those who defend themselves instead of punishing more those who attack), then it is legitimate to ask for it to be changed. This is the heart of the debate, not Roggero’s ethnic or class identity. But this European parliamentarian manages to take the podium even in a case like this: it is indecency in the political debate over a sentence. But she never pays anyway.
Read more Roggero, Giorgia Meloni: «Those who commit a crime cannot claim compensation» | Libero Quotidiano.it
Another who never misses an opportunity to stand out is a prominent convict, Chiara Appendino, who has the nerve to lash out against the center-right. «The right’s response to the sentence on Mario Roggero outrages me. Instead of addressing the deep reasons for that loneliness – hiring more officers, reducing the exhausting shifts of law enforcement, truly patrolling the territories – Salvini, Crosetto, and Cirio pounce like jackals mobilizing en masse for the pardon». She too shows not a shred of understanding for the jeweler or for that large part of Italians who support Roggero’s pardon.
Even Edoardo Ziello of Futuro Nazionale manages to polemicize. The deputy from Vannacci complains about his amendment not approved by the center-right on the issue of proportionality between offense and defense. The important thing is to attack those in power… Then if Roggero is in prison and Brusca is free, it’s always someone else’s fault.
