Rogoredo, Cinturrino: ‘I never planned to kill Mansouri’

Milan, 17 March (LaPresse) – ‘I never planned to kill Abderrahim Mansouri; I was afraid in a rough part of Milan.’ This is what Carmelo Cinturrino told the judges at the Milan Review Court, in summary. The assistant chief’s words, reported on the sidelines of the hearing by his lawyer, Marco Bianucci, were given as spontaneous statements during the hearing to discuss the request to replace pre-trial detention in prison with house arrest. ‘We have presented defence evidence,’ the lawyer explained to reporters after a two-hour hearing. This includes statements from ‘other members of the police force’ present in Rogoredo on the evening of the 28-year-old drug dealer’s death and a ‘preliminary report’ on the shot that killed him from a distance of about thirty metres. Cinturrino reportedly admitted, once again, to “having placed the weapon near the body” to simulate self-defence, but “denied” the account put forward by Public Prosecutor Giovanni Tarzia and the Milan Public Prosecutor, Marcello Viola, who have been investigating him since yesterday for murder with aggravating circumstances of premeditation. “He told us that he contests the reconstruction that has been made recently and with yesterday’s notification of the request for a preliminary hearing,” states the lawyer assisting him alongside Davide Giuseppe Bugno. The police officer was reportedly “afraid” in “a rough part of our city, at a certain time of the evening, in the dark”. ‘He had no connection with Mansouri,’ he continued, ‘he only knew him from a police mugshot; that is what he told us.’ He added nothing regarding the “threats” mentioned by some witnesses – drug addicts and dealers – to the Mobile Squad, as these are ‘documents that were only handed over today in court’.