By Wendy Igwema
It all happened one morning, 4am to be precise, on the 28th of October 2020. We were just waking up from sleep in our home in Torino. Suddenly there was a knock on the door. When I opened I saw about nine Italian policemen. One of them was a woman. I asked them what they wanted. ‘We want to take your husband in for questioning’ one of them said to me. They said they were arresting him on mafia-related crimes in Italy. They proceeded to search the entire apartment and they did not find what they were looking for.
(pix: Remonews)
As they took my husband away, I requested to go with them to their station but they refused, saying that all they want is to interview him. They said they would let him go afterwards. Before they took him away, my husband called his lawyer, and told him about the presence of the police in our house. He advised that we closely watch them so they wouldn’t plant anything in our house. We did so.
Let me
quickly state my husband is not a mafia member. He has worked here in a
hospital as a nurse in Vias Palato Capa GS in Torino for over 12 of the 16
years that we have lived here in Italy. He is a law-abiding person who has no
criminal record whatsoever – no 419, no internet fraud, nothing.
After about a 2-hour
search of our house where they found nothing, they took him away. On that same
day around 11am, I got a call from the Italian police, that they have decided
to remand my husband in prison. I requested to know why. They didn’t tell me
why. So I requested to speak with my husband, who told me that the police
accused him of belonging to a mafia group in Italy. ‘Are you a mafia member’, I
asked my husband. ‘No, but I am a Norseman’, he said to me.
So I met the lawyer
again, an Italian. The Italian police did not allow him to see my husband.
After about 14 days of my husband being in detention without access to his
lawyer and family, I was eventually to find out that they also arrested anyone
remotely or close to him. They arrested them all, about 50 of them in number.
It was a massive raid in Bologna, Milan, Torino, Rome, Naples, Sicily and
Sardinia.
Information that
reached me indicated that the whole raid was just about rival groups in Italy
who fought against one another sometime ago. Our lawyer, Emmanuel Pergas, met
the police and demanded to be shown proof that my husband was part of the group
that participated in that brawl. The police told our lawyer that they had
monitored meetings that cult groups in Italy have had over a long period. In
all of the about video surveillances, my husband was not in any of them.
They said though that my husband participated as a boss when he intervened and
made peace between two Nigerians having an altercation on the streets of Torino.
My husband
has been in prison over ten months without charge. Each time he is taken before
a judge, the Italian police always argued for an adjournment which they always
got. Most of the said court appearances were online, and only the lawyer makes
an appearance. I go to see my husband every week, and the last time I saw him,
he was looking very unwell. I was pregnant when they came to arrest him, and
the sudden nature of the affair led to my losing my pregnancy.
The
name of the prison where my husband is being detained illegally is Vallette.
There are hundreds of Nigerians held in this prison and many other prisons in
Italy without charge. Over 52 Nigerians were arrested in Italy on the day my
husband was arrested.
I
am basically surviving on the stipends that come from the hospital my husband
works. There’s no other assistance whatsoever from any source. He has a life
contract with the hospital. They cannot sack him. The hospital has also made a
case for my husband that he has worked with them for over a decade without
blemish of any kind. They have agreed to testify in court to my husband’s good
name in Torino.
These
people (Italian Police) has worked to cancel the next court appearance in
September. They are bent on just keeping our people in jail to rot and
languish. In the year 2019 after I lost my twins, friends and well-wishers came
to the cemetery for the burial of my twins. They wore black clothes. Because of
that, most of them were arrested as Mafia members.
Please
let the Italian police release my husband and the many other Nigerians
languishing in jails in Nigeria. We their wives are suffering. If they
are alleged to have committed any offence, let them take them to court to prove
their innocence.
*Igwema
lives in Torino Italy.
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