In the trial before the Federal Criminal Court against the stabber from Lugano, a psychiatrist confirmed the diagnosis of the psychosis.
The Federal Criminal Court in Bellinzona
A court psychiatrist was heard on Tuesday in the main hearing against a 29-year-old woman from Ticino, who carried out a knife attack on two customers in a shopping center in Lugano on November 24, 2020 and claimed terrorist motives. The expert Alessandra Canuto largely confirmed in her statements the diagnosis of her colleague Carlo Calanchini from the previous day.
According to the expert, the accused woman suffers from a psychosis and limited mental abilities. However, in conversations with the woman in prison over the course of a year, she was able to see minimal progress, the doctor explained. Nevertheless, she also classified the probability of a repeat offense as high.
Both psychiatrists agreed that the perpetrator required a long inpatient treatment. How long, no one could say. In contrast to her colleague, the psychiatrist was of the opinion that there were no adequate options for treating the woman in Ticino. Only the institutions in Hindelbank near Bern or Curabilis near Geneva are suitable for such treatments. However, there could be language problems there, since the perpetrator understands a few fragments of German and French, but only speaks Italian. At the moment the accused, who also suffers from schizophrenia, is being treated against her will in the Ticino remand prison – with drugs and injections.
Based on a statement made by the accused on Monday, according to which they sent the fighters in Syria 18,000 francs to support them in the “holy war”, the federal prosecutor’s office has meanwhile expanded the charge. The lead federal prosecutor did not give a good picture and was loudly reprimanded by the court president.
First, the public prosecutor had declared that she wanted to use this financing to charge a violation of Article 260ter of the Criminal Code (support for terrorist organizations). After an interruption in the hearing, she withdrew this demand. She then spoke of a violation of Article 2 of the federal law prohibiting the groups al-Qaeda and Islamic State and related organizations.
For her part, the accused corrected a statement from the previous day to a precise question from her defense attorney, according to which she would commit the knife attack again in the same way. This time she explained: “I would do the deed again, but not in Switzerland, but elsewhere.” The hearing will continue on Thursday with the pleadings of the federal prosecutor and the defense. The verdict will be announced on September 19th.