A Malian national, Sacko Soumali, 29, was shot dead and two other Malians were injured in Calabria on June 2. Investigators believe the murder could have been in retaliation for the theft of aluminum.
Sacko Soumali, a 29-year-old activist for the rights of migrant workers, had accompanied two Malians like himself to collect aluminum sheeting for their makeshift hut in the camp at San Ferdinando. However, he was shot dead in the head.
Prosecutors in Vibo Valentia and Carabinieri police from the Tropea unit are allegedly close to solving the crime, which is not thought to have a racist matrix.
Investigations and the witness account
Investigators are concentrating on the motive for the shooting. "We needed sheeting and we went to the factory. We set off on foot and had barely had time to take three sheets when someone arrived in an old white Fiat panda and opened fire," Drame Madiheri, 39, who was lightly injured in the leg, told ANSA. "Sacko fell to the ground with a shot to the head. I felt a burning sensation in my leg. I was the white man with the gun. He made four shots from top to bottom," Madiheri continued.
Soumali and his life in a migrant camp
The victim was in Italy legally, as were his two co-nationals. He arrived in the country before 2010 and lived in a new tent camp, but decided to help the two friends who instead live in the informal settlement a few hundred metres away that grew up in the wake of the 'Rosarno revolt' that pitted migrant farm workers and local inhabitants against one another.
There have been several calls for the settlement to be cleared and the migrants to be given more dignified accommodation, but so far the situation has remained unchanged. Soumali was in the front line in the fight for the rights of farm laborers and union representatives have called for a day's strike on the Gioia Tauro plain on Tuesday.