Stabbed to death, cut into pieces, hidden in a suitcase, then, once they arrived on the beach, mutilated and left at the mercy of the current of the Entella river in Chiavari. Only because he had decided to leave that barber job which didn’t allow him to earn enough and which he needed to help his parents who remained in Egypt. However, they hadn’t come to terms with the sea current which, after just two days, brought what was left of his body back to shore, revealing the contours of a heinous crime. The rest, however, was told by the surveillance cameras located in the Genoese alleys as well as some witnesses.
It then took seven hours of interrogation to arrive at the confession of the murder of Mahmoud Abdalla, an 18-year-old barber of Egyptian origin residing in Genoa. Cornered, Abdelwahab Ahmed Gamal Kamel, 27, known as Tito, and Mohamed Ali Abdelghani Ali, known as Bob, 26, employer and partner of the barbershop «Aly Barber Shop» in via Merano, in Sestri Ponente, confirmed of having killed the young man, but blaming each other and trying to pass it off as an accident. A story that the investigators do not believe. What the two agree on instead is the motive, that “fear that, in leaving work, customers would follow him”.
Prosecutor Daniela Pischetola, who investigated them for aggravated murder in competition and destruction of a corpse, said that the 18-year-old, who had been living in the back room of the shop with other employees for a few months, had decided to quit. He had found work in Pegli and did not want to miss that opportunity which would not only have allowed him to have a higher salary, but which would also have allowed him to make a name for himself among the many Egyptian barbers who work in the guts of the Genoese city.
But Bob and Tito disagreed. They had seen him growing up in their salon and customers were asking about him more and more often. So, after trying to threaten the owner of the competing barbershop, they decided to resolve the situation in their own way. They asked the young man to join them in the back room and, after an argument, they grabbed a knife and an awl and stabbed him in the heart, liver and stomach.
Once dead, they put the body in a suitcase and transported it to Chiavari by taxi where they dismembered the body on the beach, not far from the mouth of the river, first cutting off his head and then his hands and throwing his remains into the sea. It was the same taxi driver, heard by the carabinieri led by lieutenant colonel Michele Lastella, who confirmed that he had started the ride in Sestri Ponente. Â «They had two heavy suitcases, I asked them to lift them,» he said. So heavy that the two Egyptians are immortalized while, shortly after 3 in the morning on Monday 24 July, they carry them with difficulty on their shoulders in an attempt to reach the beach of Chiavari. When they go back the suitcase is lighter.
The sea then does the rest, returning the young man’s hands, which allowed him to be recognized, and the rest of the body. Only his head was not found: it remained, in all probability, in the deep waters off the coast of Santa Margherita Ligure.