Three weeks in jail with a very heavy charge, that of attempted murder of a police officer, and the threat of a long detention – up to twenty years – if the charge was tried. But a careful examination of the films presented by the defense lawyer was enough to convince the Barcelona judges to release Sara Casiccia, the 35-year-old anarchist from Turin arrested on suspicion of having set fire to a van of the Guàrdia Urbana during the clashes of last February 27 on the occasion of the protests against the arrest of the rapper Pablo Hasel.
In the end it all turned out to be a big, and inexplicable, mistake taken by the Mossos d’Esquadra, the Catalan regional police, to the point that the same prosecutor joined the request of the lawyer for the release of the long-resident videomaker Barcelona.
Fortunately for Casiccia, the key moments of that night were documented in several videos taken with smartphones and disseminated on social media and local information sites. Two in particular allowed her to be cleared. In the first, we see a girl sprinkling white spirit, an incendiary liquid, a police van parked in front of the La Rambla police station, before another young man throws a Molotov cocktail: while the vehicle catches fire, the agent who was in the driver’s seat he manages to get out and get to safety protected by the shields of his companions under a dense throwing of stones and bottles by the demonstrators.
The other video takes up the moment of the arrest of Sara Casiccia by the Mossos d’Esquadra, which took place shortly after a couple of kilometers away, in the Rambla de Catalunya on the corner with Còrsega. The girl in the first movie wore jeans, brown shoes, a lilac scarf around her neck and a cap on her head. In the video of the arrest, it is seen that Sara is wearing tight black trousers and black shoes. Nothing around the neck, no cap. But there is more: from the anthropometric expertise requested by the lawyer Jose Manuel Del Rio it is clear that they are two different people, in terms of height, weight and complexion.
In the appeal to the court, the lawyer denounced that the report presented by the Mossos was “chaotic and full of conjectures”. In addition to the error of person, in fact, it will now be necessary to clarify the position of the other seven arrested that night (five other Italians, one French and one Spanish). According to the police, they were part of a single, dangerous “criminal organization”. With another, strange “oversight”, the report indicates that they were all stopped in Calle Valencia, while in reality Casiccia was blocked on Rambla de Catalunya. As “queen proof” of the existence of some sort of criminal organization, the Mossos then point to the fact that everyone had the same type of lighter in their pockets. Very weak clue also because it is the most common Bic lighter, usually given as a gift to those who buy a pack of poor quality tobacco because they do not have the money to buy a pack of cigarettes.
At this point, while there is no trace of the real person responsible for the attack on the police van, Casiccia has therefore regained her freedom, even if she remains registered in the register of indications and her passport has been withdrawn. For the moment, waiting for her trial position to be defined together with that of the other young people arrested, she has found a long trail of hatred on her social accounts: sentenced without trial for an act she did not commit.
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