Le Figaro Lyon
Having received a request for release, the Lyon Court of Appeal rejected this Thursday the request for release of Edgardo Greco, this Italian pizza maker on the run in France since 2006 and suspected of belonging to the Calabrian mafia 'Ndrangheta .
Contacted by
Le Figaro
, his lawyer David Metaxas indicated that he was going to
“appeal to the Court of Cassation as of this Thursday”
.
“We are going to make this request because we are sure of our argument.
“It’s not normal to see someone in detention for free for a year
,” the lawyer continued.
A court of last resort which had rather succeeded for its client in mid-January when the latter had annulled the decision of the Lyon Court of Appeal by pointing out an irregularity in the decision of the Lyon investigating chamber, the judges having participated during the interrogation not being the same as those who signed the report.
“During the interrogation report of March 30, 2023, the investigating chamber was composed of Mr. Pisana, president, Ms. Fouché and Ms. Palle, advisors, (…) and during the debates and deliberations, of Mr. Pisana, president, Ms. Fouché and Ms. Duval, advisors;
"so that the procedure is not regular and the judgment does not meet, in form, the essential conditions of its legal existence"
, concluded the Court of Cassation in its decision.
“Detained without rights or title”
Since then, the counsel of Edgardo Greco, sentenced to life imprisonment in 2006 in Italy for having committed several murders - which he always denied - for the mafia in the 1990s, had continued to ask for his release, believing that their client
“was now detained without rights or title”
.
Edgardo Greco was arrested in 2021 in Saint Étienne, identified by facial recognition software following the publication on the internet of an article in the local newspaper Le
Progrès
announcing the opening of his pizzeria in Saint-Étienne.