Nicola Di Santo, the Italian prisoner in Indonesia who now faces the death penalty. The appeal to the government: “Make him come back”

A strange robbery. The alleged stolen goods hidden in a cryptocurrency account. And above all the story of an Italian boy, the cook Nicola Di Santo, who has been in prison in Bali for more than seven months, beaten, tortured, and who risks up to the death penalty for a crime that he swears he has never committed. The senator is raising the case Gregorio De Falco who submitted an urgent parliamentary question. And Di Santo’s lawyer, Alessandra Ballerini, the Genoese lawyer specializing in civil rights who, among others, also defends Giulio Regeni’s parents, Mario Paciolla and Andy Rocchelli. They are the ones who ask for the intervention of the Italian government so that the boy can return to Italy and, possibly, face a fair trial.

The story begins in March 2020 when Di Santo, who had been living and working as a cook in Australia for two years, went on vacation to Bali. However, the pandemic stops him on the island where he makes the best of a bad situation. She meets an Italian who had lived on the island for some time and with him they imagine a series of businesses: on the one hand a chain of restaurants, since Di Santo was a professional. And on the other, an investment in cryptocurrencies, since the Italian was an expert broker.

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Business is good at first. The Italian boy says, in the phone calls with his parents in Italy, that everything is going as it should. The problems arise at the end of 2021: relations between the two partners are cracked and so on Of Santo decides to return to Italy. His father buys him tickets when he loses contact with him. He only realizes why a few days later when, finally, he manages to get in touch with the Italian embassy: his son has been arrested on charges of robbing his former partner.

To materially carry out the robbery were the Russians but, according to the alleged victim who filed the complaint, Di Santo would be the principal. The boy says he is innocent, but this is not the most important point: the question is that the cook in prison tells, and documents, that he was beaten up by the police. That he would have put out cigarettes on his body, pointed the gun to his head to force him to confess. However, he continues to say that he is innocent. And he also tells our diplomats who are going to visit him in prison on November 16.

On that occasion, he was suggested to appoint a law firm there, which Di Santo does. The lawyers make contact with his family in Italy and first ask for € 12,418 for legal fees. And then a further payment of one billion rupees (61,500) explaining that it was the price to get it out. A kind of bail. Family members pay. But Di Santo remains in prison.

From that moment on, the answers from the legal office come with a dropper: Indonesian lawyers report that the police want to question Nicola again until March 13 when the firm stops responding. In the meantime, the family realizes that in the file there is also a confession of the boy. But that was immediately retracted. “They extorted it from me while they tortured me,” DI Santo tells his father and his lawyer.

The point is that no documents have been sent to Italy. “Meanwhile, the conditions in which the boy finds himself are incredible,” explains the lawyer Dancers. “The cell measures thirteen steps from one wall to the other, as reported by Nicola, you sleep on the floor, there is no chair or table and the prisoners have to use a bucket to flush the toilet. Nicola eats two bowls of rice a day. He often has a fever, has lost 12 kilos and is in absolutely poor health. He leaves the cell only to go to the court hearings. He is forbidden to call and receive visits, including those from lawyers and doctors, unlike other inmates who also have access to the service telephone “.