A court in Pavia has sentenced Massimo Adriatici, a former security councillor in Voghera, to 12 years in prison for the fatal shooting of Younes El Boussettaoui, a 39-year-old Moroccan national, during an altercation in July 2021.
The ruling was issued following a trial held behind closed doors, with the sentence slightly harsher than the 11 years and four months requested by the public prosecutor.
El Boussettaoui was shot on the evening of July 20, 2021, in Piazza Meardi, the central square of Voghera, a town in northern Italy’s Lombardy region. According to court findings, Adriatici fired a single shot during a confrontation outside a bar.
At the time of the incident, Adriatici — a lawyer by profession with a background in policing — was serving as the municipality’s councillor for security. He was affiliated with Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini’s right-wing League party.
As reported by Il Giornale, Adriatici admitted discharging the firearm but maintained that he acted in self-defense. His legal team argued that El Boussettaoui, who was homeless at the time of his death, had approached the councillor and slapped him. The politician’s defense was that he briefly lost consciousness and was in a state of what they described as “natural incapacity.” His lawyers claimed the gun went off accidentally when he fell.
Prosecutors rejected that account, arguing that the evidence supported a charge of voluntary manslaughter. The case was initially framed as excessive self-defense during the early stages of the investigation, but a judge later ordered the charge to be upgraded.
In addition to the prison term, the court ordered Adriatici to pay €380,000 in provisional compensation to the victim’s family. The victim’s parents were each awarded €90,000, while his two brothers and two sisters will receive €50,000 each. All had been plaintiffs in a concurrent civil suit.
Outside the courthouse, one of El Boussettaoui’s sisters said the family was satisfied with the outcome.
“We are delighted,” said Bahija El Boussettaoui, one of Younes’s sisters, as cited by L’Unione Sarda. “I didn’t expect a sentence higher than the prosecutor’s request. But we won’t be truly happy until we see Adriatici in prison in handcuffs. Compensation? That’s not an issue for us right now. We’re just asking for justice for my brother.”
“With this ruling, the judge has demonstrated that we must all be treated equally before the law,” added the lawyers for the family in a joint statement.
