ITALY: Ten-years for policeman who shot youth
01 May 2001
In April Judge Alfonso Barbarano found Tommaso Leone guilty of the "voluntary homicide" of 17-year-old Mario Castellano, sentencing him to a ten-year prison term (see Statewatch vol 10 nos 3/4). The policeman shot Castellano in the back on 20 July 2000 close to Agnano racecourse near Naples, as he fled on his moped after failing to stop when he was flagged down for not wearing a helmet. The shooting led to rioting, during which three police cars were destroyed, as police battled with a crowd for two hours before they were able to remove Castellano's body.
Family members claimed that the police officer had persecuted Mario: his twin brother Lorenzo said that Leone had sworn that he would kill him, probably to intimidate him. The main eyewitness, Giovanni De Bernardo, who works in the nearby racecourse, claimed that he saw the policeman kneel, aim and shoot the youth. He confronted Leone, who threatened him and accused him of being the dead youth's accomplice. Leone claims that he mistakenly shot the youth after slipping, although he failed to testify in court.
Leone will serve his sentence in Santa Maria Capua Vetere military prison. In addition to his prison sentence, Leone has been banned from holding public office and has been ordered to pay Lit. 200 million (£65,000) damages to the Castellano family. Prosecutors had demanded a 16-year sentence considering the disproportionate nature of the policeman's action. Gaetano Montefusco, from the Castellano family's legal team, argued that the incident was totally unnecessary as the youth could have been arrested later, "after all agent Tommaso Leone himself knew Mario Castellano's address". Montefusco also criticised the Interior Ministry, claiming that the policeman's work record was littered with worrying precedents. In his native region of Apulia he was investigated and cleared of shooting a smuggler during a gunfight in 1996.
Castellano's mother, Patrizia Battimelli, welcomed the sentence but expressed doubts as to whether the police officer would serve the full sentence: "We want him to serve his full sentence and not receive special treatment in jail just because of the uniform he wore. He shot an innocent boy and this makes him a murderer...".
Repubblica, 25.4.01; Il Mattino, 21-23 & 28.7.01, 15.10.01, 5.11.00, 31.1.01, 2.2.01, 25.4.01; La Verita - Napoli, 25.4.01. Further information: http://web.tiscalinet.it/castellanomario/