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May 25, 2021 Alija Hrustic, a 26-year-old of Croatian origin, was sentenced to life imprisonment and 9 months of daytime solitary confinement for the murder of her 2 and a half year old son, in May 2019 in via Ricciarelli in Milan. This was decided by the Court of Assizes of Milan, chaired by Ilio Mannucci Pacini, who accepted the request of the prosecutor Giovanna Cavalleri. The judges recognized the torture, as well as willful murder and ill-treatment, all aggravated.
The Hrustic case was the first in Italy in which torture was contested in the context of violence in the family. The Court, which acquitted the accused of the mistreatment of the other two daughters, also established compensation for around € 300,000, including the child's mother. The reasons will be filed within 90 days.
The accused, present in the courtroom, remained impassive while reading the device. His defender, the lawyer Giuseppe De Lalla, announced an appeal. "Frankly, I did not expect the sentence for torture - said the lawyer - as it was reconstructed in the documents. Nor did I expect a life sentence. It seems incredible, but I was hoping for a sentence of 30 years, which I would have considered more relevant to the facts as they have been reconstructed in the documents, beyond the press articles, which often have not been faithful. We await the reasons ". And also: "In any case, it remains a horrendous tragedy".
In her indictment, the prosecutor Cavalleri, owner of the investigation, said that the head injury of the child, which caused his death, "was inflicted by the father as the last act of a night of torture" and the accused " he couldn't help but know that this action would kill him. Then he concluded: "The conduct against the child, from cigarette burns, to burns, to the innumerable injuries, however partly admitted by the accused himself, were characterized by gratuitous cruelty".