The fire in the nomad camp of Turin in 2011

  • "The gypsies raped me."

    A girl's false report sparked the burning of the nomad camp

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13 July 2018 Four convictions were pronounced in Turin by the Court of Appeal for the fire started in 2011 in a Roma camp after a protest demonstration by citizens of the peripheral district of Vallette.

The judges confirmed the aggravating circumstance of ethnic and racial hatred for some defendants.

Outside the classroom one of those present shouted "a joke". 



However, the Court has reduced the sentences imposed on the accused, which now range from 2 to 4 years in prison.

The facts date back to 10 December 2011. The demonstration, as reconstructed by the first instance sentence, was called "when a minor girl invented and denounced having been raped by gypsies to hide from her family members that she had had sexual intercourse".



After a torchlight procession, during which a Carabinieri officer informed of the developments of the investigation tried in vain to convince those present that the rape had never happened, a group of people entered the Continassa camp, on the outskirts of the city, to devastate and set fire cabins, shacks and caravans.

The nomads fled, while the remaining demonstrators cheered and cheered.

The first instance judge Paola Trovati wrote in the reasons that the stake "was the product of an atavistic and never subsided ethnic hatred towards gypsies", which led "normal citizens" to carry out "acts of inhuman violence".





Civil lawyer: important sentence


 "An important sentence. And that it has arrived at this moment is also useful."

Thus the lawyer Gianluca Vitale comments on the ruling with which the Turin Court of Appeal today sentenced four people for the fire in a nomad camp.

Vitale is one of the lawyers of the civil party: his clients are a Roma woman and her young daughter, who during the fire could not get away and hid in the bushes.


"In my opinion - he adds - the thing to underline is that the aggravating circumstance of ethnic hatred has been confirmed. When filing the reasons we will see what were the mechanisms that led the judges to recalculate the sentence".

The Court sanctioned the right of Roma to compensation to be quantified in civil proceedings, and granted that the lawyer be paid legal fees, quantified in just over a thousand euros.