An Italian student was arrested in Germany on charges of kidnapping and murdering his ex-girlfriend Giulia Cecchettin.
Investigators in Italy spent a week looking for Filippo Turetta, 22, before German police discovered him stranded in his vehicle near Leipzig.
Last Saturday, before she could obtain her biomedical engineering degree from the University of Padua, Cecchettin vanished. Her corpse was located in a ravine near Lake Barcis, roughly 120 kilometers north of Venice, with her head and neck perforated with stab wounds. Later that day, German police detained Turetta after he stopped in the emergency lane of a highway near Leipzig because he ran out of gas.
Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani of Italy has stated that Turetta will return to Italy within 48 hours to face consequences.
This week, police got a break after seeing photos of the attack Turetta committed on Cecchettin on November 11 on surveillance cameras near her house. A day of sorrow will be observed on the day of Cecchettin’s burial, as Veneto president Luca Zaia announced. To end femicide, he said, “education alone is not enough.” Instead, he advocated instilling respect for women in young children as early as kindergarten.
The murder of Ms. Cecchettin is the most recent femicide instance in Italy this year, where scores of women have been murdered by their male partners. According to the Italian interior ministry, 82 of the 102 women murdered in Italy in the year up to November 12 were killed by close relatives or current or past romantic partners. On Saturday, the Italian air force brought 21-year-old Turetta back to Italy from Germany.
Throughout the days after Turetta went missing, his automobile was spotted on surveillance cameras throughout northern Italy, Austria, and Germany. On the evening of November 11th, a camera placed a few kilometers from Cecchettin’s home saw Turetta’s automobile and the lady who fled from it going a few feet down a sidewalk before a guy, believed to be Turetta, repeatedly assaulted her. She collapsed to the ground and was loaded into the car.
Elena Cecchettin, the older sister of Cecchettin, called on the group of young people gathered outside the family’s home to “make noise” to demand an end to violence against women in Italy and to challenge the country’s patriarchal culture.
In response to her call, Italians gathered in large numbers in vigils, marches, and demonstrations around the country, including in several cities on Saturday, when they shook keys, yelled, and otherwise made it clear they wouldn’t be silent.
