The Italian president has refused to pardon a butcher who was sentenced to five years in prison for shooting a burglar who in contrast is on the run and has not spent a single day in jail.
In contrast, the crook, Elson Ndreca, is still free after he fled back to Albania after testifying against the Italian man, and successfully applying for compensation for his injury.
The crook was later sentenced to three years and eight months in prison but has not served a single day behind bars because the police cannot catch him.
Meanwhile, Walter Onichini, the terrified homeowner from Legnaro, in Italy’s Padua Province, who wounded the Albanian in what he said was self-defence, was sentenced to four years and 11 months in jail.
His wife, not named, told local media: “Only those who have experienced it first-hand can understand what it means to wake up in the middle of the night with criminals in the garden and know that your family, your children, are at home.
“In that situation of stress, in the dark, you cannot expect a person to act in a perfectly rational way, to be able to evaluate every detail clearly. Even the Attorney General understood this, but the judges didn’t listen to him.”
He had already been imprisoned for 18 months before he was given probationary custody in the community, where he has to live with his family in Camponogara, in the province of Veneto.
He is only allowed out to go to work at his sister’s butcher’s shop, but he still has the jail sentence hanging over him, according to local media.
He will now have to finish his sentence, according to his lawyer, Ernesto De Toni.
In 2019, the Attorney General had unsuccessfully made a request to the judges to declassify the initial crime in 2013 from attempted murder to negligent injury after hearing how Ndreca reportedly travelled from Milan to the butcher’s home specifically to rob it.
But now Italian President Sergio Mattarella, 82, has rejected the pardon plea from Walter despite its support by Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni.
The burglar, meanwhile, was also due to appear in court in March on perjury charges for having failed to denounce his accomplices, but he did not show up.
In addition, the butcher has been ordered to pay his victim EUR 24,500 (GBP 21,144), but Ndreca, in contrast, has failed to make good a court order to compensate the butcher to the tune of EUR 15,000 (GBP 12,945) compensation plus EUR 5,000 (GBP 4,300) in legal fees.
