The Colombian newspaper El Espectador today published an article signed by the journalist Claudia Julieta Duque entitled ‘Mario Paciolla: two contradictory autopsies and the stamp of impunity’, in which it raises the hypothesis of a possible murder and a desire to cover up of the investigation in Colombia into the real causes of the death of Mario Paciolla, a Neapolitan UN aid worker, found dead at the age of 33 in his home in Bogotà on 15 July 2020.
Duque, who knew Paciolla and followed the evolution of the case from the very beginning, writes in the opening of his article that the truth of what happened “was covered by the brand of impunity that accompanies political killings in Colombia: two investigations judicial proceedings, two autopsies, two years and no concrete results “. And this, “despite the elements that show the destruction of evidence, the alteration of the scene of events, the simulation of a suicide, and multiple testimonies that contest the version according to which the Neapolitan poet and journalist took his own life because of depression”.
In the article it is recalled that parts of the report of the second autopsy carried out in Italy by the coroner Vittorio Fineschi and the toxicologist Donata Favretto, delivered to the Rome Public Prosecutor’s Office in the autumn of 2020, certify that “some evidence does not find any alternative explanation in the context of hypothesis of suicide, (while) mainly support the hypothesis of strangulation with subsequent suspension of the body “. To this is added that “the experts of the Italian Institute of Forensic Medicine have criticized the mismanagement of the corpse, the inaccurate description of the furrow (the sign that produces extreme pressure on the neck and that allows to differentiate a suicidal hanging from a homicidal strangulation ) and the way in which the sheet that provoked it was arranged, the insufficient photographic documentation, as well as the lack of details on, for example, the reliefs of the wounds presented on the body “.
All this made it impossible, it is still said, “to establish with absolute certainty the cause of the death of the 33-year-old young man.” Other details emerge from one of the documents that Duque was able to consult: “Although the stab wounds on the corpse could at first glance be classified as self-inflicted, a more detailed study of them allowed the coroners to ascertain that while the injuries of the right wrist show ‘clear signs of vital reaction’, in the left hand they showed ‘nuanced features of vitality’, or ‘diffuse vitality’, suggesting that some of the wounds may have been inflicted ‘in limine vitae or even post-mortem’, that is, when Paciolla was in a dying state or was already dead ”.