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Sicily double murder suspect faces judge

A judge will on Wednesday rule whether to confirm the arrest of an 18-year-old asylum seeker from the Ivory Coast, who is accused of killing an elderly couple at their home in Palagonia, Sicily, on Sunday.

Published: 2 September 2015 08:42 CEST

Sicily double murder suspect faces judge

Asylum seekers stand outside Cara Mineo, a hosting centre in Sicily. Photo: Alberto Pizzoli/AFP

Chief Prosecutor Vincenzo Verzera will ask the judge to rule that the man be held in pre-trial custody in prison, Ansa reported.

The man was arrested on Sunday after the bodies of Victor Solano, 68, and his 70-year-old Spanish wife, Mercedes Ibanez, were found at their home near the Cara Mineo refugee centre, outside Catania, where the suspect had been staying.

Solano was found with his throat slit while his wife’s body was found in the courtyard beneath their apartment. It is believed that she fell from the balcony.

Citing a judicial source, Ansa reported on Tuesday that an initial autopsy showed that Ibanez may have been raped.

The report is expected to be filed to prosecutors by the end of today, while a full autopsy report will be filed within 60 days.

The couple will be buried on Wednesday, Corriere reported.

The suspect was implicated in the double murder after a phone and laptop, allegedly belonging to the victims, were found in a bag he was carrying as he entered the refugee centre. He claimed he found the bag in the street.

Blood-stained trousers, thought to belong to the suspect, were also found in the garden of the couple’s home.

The suspect was also allegedly wearing a T-Shirt belonging to Solano, which was recognized by the deceased man’s daughter, at the time of his arrest.

His arrest flared the debate over migrants in Italy, with Matteo Salvini, the leader of the anti-immigration Northern League party, writing on Twitter and Facebook on Monday: “From what war was this guy escaping??? If he’s guilty, jail for life, with HARD LABOUR!”

Other politicians, including Sicilian President Rosario Crocetta, have called for the centre in Mineo – the largest of such facilities in Europe – to be closed.

“It will never work…it’s the wrong model,” Crocetta said.

“You can’t put three to four thousand people – without prospects or ties to the territory – together in one place.”

Premier Matteo Renzi has so far stayed silent after the couple’s daughter, Rosita Solano, blamed the government for the murders, saying it allowed “immigrants to come here and do what they want, even rob and kill us.”

On Tuesday, she told Corriere that neither the premier nor Angelino Alfano, Italy’s Interior Minister, had even Tweeted a message of support.

“My parents didn’t even merit a tweet,” she said.

“I want justice – not political controversy: Renzi come and speak to me, show your face…before the funeral. When he was nominated premier, I thought Italy would finally be worth something in Europe, instead…”

With the German far right coming out on top in two state elections earlier this month, the socialist-led national Berlin government has reimposed border controls on Western frontiers that are supposed to see freedom of movement in the European Union’s Schengen zone.

The Netherlands government, which includes the party of Dutch far-right leader Geert Wilders, announced Wednesday that it had requested from Brussels an opt-out from EU rules on asylum, with Prime Minister Dick Schoof declaring that there was an asylum “crisis”.

Meanwhile, new British Prime Minister Keir Starmer of the left-wing Labour Party paid a visit to Rome for talks with Italian counterpart Georgia Meloni, whose party has neo-fascist roots, to discuss the strategies used by Italy in seeking to reduce migration.

Far-right parties performed strongly in June European elections, coming out on top in France, prompting President Emmanuel Macron to call snap elections which resulted in right-winger Michel Barnier, who has previously called for a moratorium on migration, being named prime minister.

We are witnessing the “continuation of a rightward shift in migration policies in the European Union,” said Jerome Vignon, migration advisor at the Jacques Delors Institute think-tank.

It reflected the rise of far-right parties in the European elections in June, and more recently in the two regional elections in Germany, he said, referring to a “quite clearly protectionist and conservative trend”.

Strong message

“Anti-immigration positions that were previously the preserve of the extreme right are now contaminating centre-right parties, even centre-left parties like the Social Democrats” in Germany, added Florian Trauner, a migration specialist at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, the Dutch-speaking university in Brussels.

While the Labour government in London has ditched its right-wing Conservative predecessor administration’s plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda, there is clearly interest in a deal Italy has struck with Albania to detain and process migrants there.

Within the European Union, Cyprus has suspended the processing of asylum applications from Syrian applicants, while laws have appeared authorising pushbacks at the border in Finland and Lithuania.

Under the pretext of dealing with “emergency” or “crisis” situations, the list of exemptions and deviations from the common rules defined by the European Union continues to grow.

All this flies in the face of the new EU migration pact, agreed only in May and coming into force in 2026.

In the wake of deadly attacks in Mannheim and most recently Solingen blamed on radical Islamists, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s government also expelled 28 Afghans back to their home country for the first time since the Taliban takeover of Kabul.

Such gestures from Germany are all the more symbolic given how the country since World War II has tried to turn itself into a model of integration, taking in a million refugees, mainly Syrians in 2015-2016 and then more than a million Ukrainian exiles since the Russian invasion.

Germany is sending a “strong message” to its own public as well as to its European partners, said Trauner.

The migratory pressure “remains significant” with more than 500,000 asylum applications registered in the European Union for the first six months of the year, he said.

‘Climate on impunity’

Germany, which received about a quarter of them alone, criticises the countries of southern Europe for allowing migrants to circulate without processing their asylum applications, but southern states denounce a lack of solidarity of the rest of Europe.

The moves by Germany were condemned by EU allies including Greece and Poland, but Scholz received the perhaps unwelcome accolade of praise from Hungarian right-wing Prime Minister Viktor Orban, Moscow’s closest friend in the European Union, when he declared “welcome to the club”.

The EU Commission’s failure to hold countries to account “only fosters a climate of impunity where unilateral migration policies and practices can proliferate,” said Adriana Tidona, Amnesty International’s Migration Researcher.

But behind the rhetoric, all European states are also aware of the crucial role played by migrants in keeping sectors going including transport and healthcare, as well as the importance of attracting skilled labour.

“Behind the symbolic speeches, European leaders, particularly German ones, remain pragmatic: border controls are targeted,” said Sophie Meiners, a migration researcher with the German Council on Foreign Relations.

Even Meloni’s government has allowed the entry into Italy of 452,000 foreign workers for the period 2023-2025.

“In parallel to this kind of new restrictive measures, they know they need to address skilled labour needs,” she said.