Stories

The incident

Niki Aprile Gatti, aged 26, died on 24th June 2008 in Sollicciano prison, Florence, apparently by suicide. Niki was originally from Avezzano, in central Italy, and had been fascinated by technology from a very early age. After high school he decided to move to Rome to study engineering at Sapienza university. He also began working occasionally with computers.

He was soon offered a job with a company called Oscorp, and decided to give up his studies and move again to San Marino, where the company was based. After a time, Oscorp and several other companies got caught up in what became known as the “Premium” affair – an inquiry into a money laundering scam that basically involved tapping into people's Internet connections and charging them with calls to premium-rate telephone numbers they never made. The investigation resulted in the issue of warrants for 18 people to be remanded in custody and, on 19th June 2008, Aprile Gatti was arrested on charges of computer fraud and taken to Florence prison. All the other defendants, though, remained in the nearest prison, in Rimini.

Niki's mother, Ornella Gemini, learnt about her son's arrest by chance. She received no telephone call from him, despite the fact that he was entitled to make one. She asked to see him but was told that she couldn't because he was in solitary confinement. Then, inexplicably, friends and colleagues of Niki began pressuring her to find another lawyer for her son, and not use the Oscorp one, Marcolini, whom Niki had spoken to about the investigation before learning that he too was one of the accused. In the meantime, although Niki was in solitary confinement, he somehow received a telegram, sent from his own address, containing the name of a lawyer that he was urged to engage. As this was the only information of any kind that Niki received from the outside world in those days, he decided to take the advice as good.

On 23rd June, the day of the arrest validation hearing in Florence court, Marcolini discovered that he was no longer Niki's lawyer and that Niki was the only one of the defendants that had agreed to be questioned, instead of exercising his right to remain silent. That day, after the interrogation, which was to be followed by another two days of solitary confinement, Ornella Gemini managed to see her son fleetingly as they took him away from the court.
The next morning, in Sollicciano prison, Niki Aprile Gatti died. The reconstruction of the events leading to his death – provided immediately – was as follows: on the morning of the 24th, according to Niki's cellmates and the prison officers, he went to take his exercise from 9:30 to 10:30 am. On returning to his cell he got a pair of jeans, took a shoelace from his shoe and hung himself. A 118 emergency ambulance call was made from the prison at 11:15. This is the only certain fact about the death. All the rest is contradictions.

The autopsy initially put the time of death at 10 am, but according to the official reconstruction Niki was out doing his walking exercise then. Also, a prison officer remembers talking to Niki at that very time, telling him that he was probably going to be released the next day. Then, despite the fact that Niki's two cellmates were classed as dangerous and under visual surveillance, it took a long time for aid to arrive after the death – apart from the fact that shoelaces aren't allowed in cells under high surveillance. As well as this, the reconstruction of the suicide itself is technically implausible. Niki Aprile Gatti weighed 92 kg and a noose made of jeans and shoelaces could never have borne his weight, plus the fact that the bathroom ceiling was too low for his body to hang from. In the autopsy report, the police doctor wrote that Niki was choked by the jeans, but the mark in the photo can only be attributable to the pressure of a lace – an oversight by the police doctor. And then there's the question of the walking exercise: it was stated that Niki took his exercise that morning whereas the other detainees in the cell didn't. What was strange, though, was that Niki died in his pyjamas, as if he had never left the cell.

One month later, Ornella's husband and brother-in-law went to Niki's house to find that it had been emptied of all its contents. Ornella Gemini reported the theft both in San Marino, where her statement was dismissed, and in Italy. It was discovered later that the house had been emptied by some friends of Niki's.
The Republic of San Marino requested international assistance from Italy in investigating the death of Niki Aprile Gatti. The case, however, was finally dismissed by Florence Court in May 2010.

Ornella Gemini, together with the Committee for Truth and Justice for Niki Aprile Gatti, continues to fight to get the case reopened.