After being sentenced to 13 years and two months in prison, Domenico Lucano seemed overcome by emotion during a solidarity protest organized in his honor.The former mayor, better known as 'Mimmo', who in 2016 was named by Forbes as one of the top 50 most influential people in the world, broke down in tears.

On Friday he had spent the entire day calmly answering the questions of journalists flocking to Riace for a protest to support him. However, at the end of his speech, during a performance that was part of the event, he lifted his hand to his face to cover the tears flowing out, his friends nearby attempting to console him.

"I have nothing in my life except the pride of having, for years, followed an ideal and done things that gave me an immense sense of satisfaction, of having helped many people who arrived in Riace while fleeing war and poverty," Lucano repeated.

The anti-mafia commission has said that he should not be running in the next regional elections, where he is a candidate for the assembly as the head of the "Un'Altra Calabria é Possibile" (Another Calabria is possible) party in all three of the voting districts. Lucano's party is one of eight party lists supporting the candidate for president of the region Luigi de Magistris. On October 5, it was reported that Luigi de Magistris did not win the elections which took place on October 3.

'I worked hard until the end'

"What hurts me the most is to think that people can have doubts about me. I am not afraid of the sentence," he said, reiterating that "I have spent my entire life" working hard for ideals. "These doubts hurt me in my soul. I did not do this for any ulterior motives and even the prosecution states this. I worked hard to the very end," he stressed.

Lucano then cited three well-known names of people who have worked against the mafia - Peppe Valarioti, Peppino Impastato, and Rocco Gatto - saying they were the ones who inspired his actions.

Lucano is also angry. He was expecting to be acquitted of all charges and instead was handed a 13-year prison sentence.Two charges, especially, bother him: One is criminal association. "If I am guilty," he said, frankly, "they should have put alongside me the interior ministry and the Reggio Calabria prefect's office, since they were asking for very high numbers for a small borgo, to which I said yes for my mission. And this is how the state is repaying me? Giving me 13 years and two months in prison."

A charge of graft

"The prosecution itself," he said, "stated that no, this mayor did not have economic motivations at the personal level. However, he engaged in some distractions. But this is the essence of the Riace model. With this money we also engaged in integration activities. I could not accept that reception was unilateral, that it only involved refugees. I thought that it should also involve the inhabitants of the place itself."

Over and above the sentence, Lucano's thoughts, he says, rests with the migrants themselves. On the morning of October 1, he met with them in the 'Global Village', a symbol of the 'Riace model', where in the center of the town there are craft shops opened over the years by refugees that came and stayed in this hill town some seven kilometers from the sea.

Since he was put under house arrest, few migrants have stayed. And it is to one of the women who lived here that Lucano's thoughts wandered: Becky Moses, a 26-year-old Nigerian who died on January 27, 2018 in a fire in the San Ferdinando shantytown, where she had sought refuge after leaving Riace following the closing down of a project to help refugees there.

"For two years," Lucano told the audience listening to him, "she lived in Riace, happy. And then where did she go? To the shantytown, into a world of invisible people where death came to find her. For four months her body was left in the morgue. They called me and now she is in the cemetery in Riace, the only place that tried to give her dignity both in life and in death."

Then Lucano broke down in tears.