Reportage
Maysoon Majidi restarts hunger strike with no sign of release
The case of Maysoon Majidi has been a topic of discussion for several months now, and there have been many expressions of solidarity. It is now widely believed that she is innocent.
“Maysoon Majidi is once again on hunger strike,” said her lawyer, Giancarlo Liberati, who spoke with her by phone on Thursday morning and met with her on Wednesday. The Kurdish-Iranian filmmaker and activist, who has been in prison in Calabria for more than nine months, first in Castrovillari and now in Reggio, on charges of aiding and abetting illegal immigration, first chose to stop accepting food in May, reaching a weight of just 84 pounds.
“She is extremely depressed. She cried repeatedly during our meeting,” says regional councilor Ferdinando Laghi, who visited her in prison on Thursday. Thankfully, she has been receiving a lot of sympathy: “Maysoon has collected two packages of letters and postcards that have certainly raised her spirits,” Laghi says. ”We continue to stand by her and support her cause.”
Everyone is waiting for the next hearing, set for Wednesday in Crotone. Prosecutors claim that Majidi, 28, was “the captain's helper” on the boat that arrived on the coast of Calabria on Dec. 31 with 77 people on board, but there is little and inconsistent evidence to such claims: two witnesses supposedly pointed to her, but they are now unreachable (according to the court) and their testimony has not been videotaped, so the defense does not have the opportunity to conduct an expert investigation on the translation of what they actually said. Even more: in May, the TV show Le Iene managed to reach the two in Germany, and they claimed they had never pointed to Majidi as a trafficker and that the boat was being captained by “a Turkish man.”
The prosecutors also have a video taken from Majidi's cell phone in which she reassures her father that she is safe and thanks the ship's captain. Their claims as to what one can infer from this are controversial to say the least: filming the short video was something the real traffickers had demanded from her in order to get her family to unblock the last tranche of the payment for the voyage. According to Liberati, Majidi spent about $50,000 to get to Italy, including the payment to get to Turkey from Iran, the money for the sea crossing, and “about $16,000” she was scammed out of. This is all evidence that she was a passenger on that boat, not one of those organizing the crossing.
At the hearing on Wednesday, the police witnesses will be questioned and cross-examined; then, at the next hearing, set for Oct. 1, it will be the turn of the technical consultants and interpreters, whose reliability is already under serious question. On Oct. 22, the defense’s witnesses (two passengers from the Dec. 31 trip and the defendant's brother) will take the stand, and on Nov. 5, the verdict of the first-degree court is expected. Reportedly, after having had her petition for release rejected three times, Majidi will directly address the judge at the next hearing asking to be allowed house arrest at the very least. If convicted, she faces up to 16 years in prison, a fine of €15,000 for each person on board the ship and even deportation to Iran, where, as a Kurd, her life would be at risk.
The 28-year-old filmmaker and activist arrived in Europe after a circuitous route: after Iraq denied her a residence permit and she briefly returned home to Iran, she decided to leave with her brother for Europe. She was arrested on her arrival in Crotone, and thus began her personal hell through the vagaries of the Italian courts. At the last hearing on June 24, the panel chaired by Judge Mario D'Ambrosio agreed with the arguments of prosecutor Rossella Multari and denied the petition to release Majidi to house arrest. When she heard the court’s decision, from the cage in which she was confined, the woman showed everyone in the courtroom what she holds to be the definitive proof of her innocence: two photos, the first showing her and her brother below deck, and the other showing the ship's captain together with a woman – most likely the real traffickers.
The case of Maysoon Majidi has been a topic of discussion for several months now, and there have been many expressions of solidarity. It is now widely believed that she is innocent, a victim of false accusations and “collateral damage” of the government's migration policies, which aim at the total criminalization of those arriving by sea and set the most severe punishments for traffickers. However, the ones in charge of the boats are often just migrants like all the others: the real traffickers give them a GPS in hand and a vague and uncertain route to follow to get to shore – if nothing goes terribly wrong.
Originally published at https://ilmanifesto.it/il-processo-arranca-e-majidi-ricomincia-lo-sciopero-della-fame on 2024-09-13