Starfinancer

Risking to die for a meal, for a handful of rice picked up at Caritas a few minutes earlier. It happened in Rome, where the arid acts of the indictment that led to the validation of the arrest of a homeless couple tell a story of deep despair and degradation.

“They caused voluntary personal injuries by means of a knife consisting of a deep wound on the left wrist judged to be curable in 30 days”. Behind the words that the pm Cinzia Dell’Aglio filed yesterday in court there is the life of a twenty-six-year-old Somali stabbed on Tuesday evening.

Hossein does not have a home or even a job. He lives in the streets of San Lorenzo and often spends his days near the Caritas in Piazza dei Siculi, where among the four benches and flower beds that furnish the 900 square meters one kilometer from Termini station, an army of homeless awaits him. is given a meal. Hossein had just received one two days ago, a handful of rice. Then he ran into two other homeless people. Rubesh and Monia, who laughed yesterday in the courtroom awaiting the judge’s verdict, live by expedients. Their criminal records tell it. While their words reveal a troubled past.

Rubesh, a 41-year-old Algerian, still defends himself from the aftermath of a previous charge of attempted murder. Instead Monia, Italian born in 1974, has not seen her two children for a while, since they were entrusted to her father and she went to live on the street with Rubesh. She has short, tousled white hair. And she listens without too much concern to the report that the carabinieri hand over to the Court.

The Arma soldiers tell of their intervention around eight in the evening, when they found Hossein stained with blood, with a deep wound on his wrist. He had been stabbed by Monia and Rubesh, intent on stealing that handful of rice he had waited hours for. He defended him as he could, he reacted to the shoving. Then he was stabbed with a 19-centimeter switchblade, 7 of which was a blade.

Upon the arrival of the carabinieri, called by a passer-by, the two fled along Viale Pretoriano. Pursued, they were stopped while they still had their shirts stained with Hossein’s blood. The knife was in the backpack. Monia and Ru in court did not even try to defend themselves. They made a silent scene. The charge is of injury. They don’t have a home to spend any house arrest in.

Then the judge decided: no residence in the capital, waiting for the trial to begin. Hossein, on the other hand, is in the hospital, at Umberto I, where he arrived in red code. He is not in danger of life. He will soon return to his life, fighting in the street for a handful of rice.