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Wednesday, July 15, 2020

Italy: Senegalese Bus Driver Sentenced




In March 2019, a Senegalese school bus driver attempted to set fire to his bus full of schoolkids outside Milan. Today, Ousseynou Sy, 47, expressing no remorse, was sentenced to 24 years in prison. The below article from Il Giornale is translated by Fousesquawk.


https://www.ilgiornale.it/news/milano/bus-dirottato-sulla-paullese-ousseynou-sy-condannato-fu-1877472.html


Bus hijacked on the Paullese (road), Ousseynou Sy sentenced: "It was terrorism"

The driver of the bus hijacked on the Paullese (road) last March has been sentenced to 24 years in jail by the court in Milan: "It was terrorism".

The hijacking of the bus

The knife, the gasoline on the upholstery, and the flames among the seats of the school bus. Then the desperate cries of the students, and, finally, the squads of Carabinieri who rushed with sirens blaring to the place of the report. It all happened in a handful of thrilling minutes that morning of 20 March 2019. It took little for Ousseynou Sy, 47, from Senegal, to follow up on his delusional madness of' "avenging the deaths at sea". That is how he took it with 51 very young students from the Vailati di Crema School, threatening to set the vehicle on fire also with two teachers and a caretaker . The foreigner, assigned to drive the vehicle on that occasion, didn't think twice: He emptied a container of gasoline along the aisle between the seats, then set the fire with a  lighter. But his evil plan soon ended in failure, sent up in smoke by the shrewdness of a courageous student who  succeeded to calling 112, assuring the salvation of his school companions. Intercepted by police, in proximity of the interchange of Peschiera Borromeo on the provincial Paullese road, the (suspect) was immediately arrested with the charge of kidnapping and attempted terrorist attack.

Condemned to 24 years for terrorism

Coming down in the early afternoon of Wednesday, 15 July 2020, is the sentence of the court of Milan, which sentenced the Senegalese driver to 24 years in jail. The judge accepted the thesis of public prosecutors Luca Poniz and Alberto Nobili, who, in previous hearings, had asked for a change in the offense charged  to the 47-year-old from "kidnapping" to "kidnapping with terrorist intent". According to the Corriere della Sera, the court recognized general mitigating factors and banned him from public offices. Provisional compensation of 25,000 Euros was recognized for each of the children, victims of the attack, (who) together with their respective parents, constituted a civil part of the trial.


Mental illness rejected

The psychiatric experts requested  by the Milan court, and  performed by forensic experts Renato Ariatti and Franco Martelli, excluded that Ousseynou Sy suffers from mental illness. In the first instance, the 47-year-old had presented himself as crazy justifying having committed his madness with inconsistent motivations. "I see many mothers here," he had stated in the course of the first hearing. "I ask you to consider the children dead in the sea. I did this gesture for them." But for the judges who passed the sentence of 24 years imprisonment, "Sy is not affected by (mental) illness."

The words of Sy in the opening of the hearing

"If I had set the fire, nobody would be in the room." Those are the words of Sy in the opening of the hearing, deciding to make a spontaneous declaration. "The boys testified saying terrible things-the 47-year-old added. "But they did it only two weeks after the events." The foreigner, for the umpteenth time, reaffirmed having been treated "with all the prejudices that there are for blacks, for the other. "If you want to condemn me, go ahead, but remember that my gesture was only in the scope of saving human lives. I could no longer bear to see the horrors every day. I ask for justice for all the families who have seen relatives die off our coasts between 2018 and 2019. Because justice is not one way."


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