Student author of feminicide that shocked Italy sentenced to life – rts.ch

The court followed the prosecution’s submissions against this 22-year-old man for the murder in November 2023 of a 22-year-old student, excluding certain aggravating circumstances, according to the verdict read live by the President of the Court.

The biomedical engineering student in Padua, a university town about forty kilometers from Venice, had received at least 75 stab wounds.

A particular brutality

The accused’s lawyer considered the request for life imprisonment excessive, saying that his client, who admitted the facts, was “not Pablo Escobar”, the famous Colombian drug lord. At the opening of the trial in Venice in September, he warned against a “media trial” and insisted last week on the absence of “aggravating circumstances” such as premeditation.

But according to the prosecutor, the accused acted with “particular brutality” towards his partner before fleeing with the victim in his car.

The body was found a week after her disappearance in a ravine near Lake Barcis, north of Venice, and the young woman’s ex-companion was arrested the next day near Leipzig, Germany.

Debate on violence against women

This murder has relaunched the debate on violence against women in Italy, where macho and sexist behavior persists. Thousands of people attended his funeral and his father implored men to “question the culture that tends to minimize violence from seemingly normal men.”

Of 276 murders recorded by the Italian Interior Ministry this year, 100 victims were women, 88 of whom were killed by a relative, the vast majority by a companion or ex-companion. A figure comparable to the 110 femicides out of 310 murders during the same period last year, including 90 women killed by a loved one. In 2022, 106 women were killed by a loved one, and 107 in 2021.

The victim’s family created a foundation to develop awareness, support for women victims of violence and encourage equality and respect.

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