Milan, 26 June (LaPresse) – There have never been two criminal organisations within the grassroots trade unions SI Cobas and USB whose aim was to radicalise workers ‘of foreign origin’ in order to ‘manipulate’ them with the aim of ‘taking over the warehouses’ of multinational logistics companies. The preliminary hearing judge in Piacenza, Francesca Gigli, has acquitted the seven trade unionists charged with criminal association and 83 counts of assault, resisting a public official, unauthorised demonstration, disruption of public services, sabotage and extortion, on the grounds that the charges were unfounded. The court accepted the arguments put forward by the trade unionists’ lawyers, including Eugenio Losco, Mauro Straini, Marina Prosperi and Arturo Salerni. The decision to dismiss the case comes four years after the investigation led by Piacenza’s Public Prosecutor Grazia Pradella and Public Prosecutor Matteo Centini (now a deputy public prosecutor in Milan), which in July 2022 had also led to the arrest of eight trade unionists, including the Piacenza-based Si Cobas leaders Mohamed Arafat and Carlo Pallavicini, and, for the Unione Sindacale di Base, Roberto Montanari, Mohamed Abed Issa, Fisal Elderdah and Riad Zaghdane – a long-standing Tunisian activist who died at San Camillo Hospital in Rome on 8 December 2023 at the age of 56, after battling cancer whilst still under investigation. The arrests were quashed one month after the operation by the Mobile Squad by the Bologna Review Court, which had denied the existence of the two criminal organisations, arguing that the ‘aims of the alleged criminal associations’ were in fact ‘lawful’ and protected by the ‘Workers’ Statute’.
Piacenza: SI Cobas and USB acquitted, ‘no criminal organisation’
Milan, 26 June (LaPresse) – There have never been two criminal organisations within the grassroots trade unions SI Cobas and USB whose aim was to radicalise workers ‘of foreign origin’ in order to ‘manipulate’ them with the aim of ‘taking over the warehouses’ of multinational logistics companies. The preliminary hearing judge in Piacenza, Francesca Gigli, has acquitted the seven trade unionists charged with criminal association and 83 counts of assault, resisting a public official, unauthorised demonstration, disruption of public services, sabotage and extortion, on the grounds that the charges were unfounded. The court accepted the arguments put forward by the trade unionists’ lawyers, including Eugenio Losco, Mauro Straini, Marina Prosperi and Arturo Salerni. The decision to dismiss the case comes four years after the investigation led by Piacenza’s Public Prosecutor Grazia Pradella and Public Prosecutor Matteo Centini (now a deputy public prosecutor in Milan), which in July 2022 had also led to the arrest of eight trade unionists, including the Piacenza-based Si Cobas leaders Mohamed Arafat and Carlo Pallavicini, and, for the Unione Sindacale di Base, Roberto Montanari, Mohamed Abed Issa, Fisal Elderdah and Riad Zaghdane – a long-standing Tunisian activist who died at San Camillo Hospital in Rome on 8 December 2023 at the age of 56, after battling cancer whilst still under investigation. The arrests were quashed one month after the operation by the Mobile Squad by the Bologna Review Court, which had denied the existence of the two criminal organisations, arguing that the ‘aims of the alleged criminal associations’ were in fact ‘lawful’ and protected by the ‘Workers’ Statute’.
