Video shoot with consequences

Eight months in prison for dancing on a monument in Italy

The video clip was filmed on the steps of the largest military cemetery in Europe.(Bild: AFP/OLIVIER MORIN)

A rapper living in Udine has been sentenced by the Supreme Court in Rome for a video shoot. However, the reason is not the video itself, but rather the location: the young man danced on the steps of the memorial in Redipuglia in the northern Italian region of Friuli Venezia Giulia, where the remains of more than 100,000 fallen soldiers from the First World War rest.

Justin Owusu, who comes from Ghana, was sentenced to eight months in prison. The friend who shot the video was sentenced to six months in prison. The case dates back to 2017, when the two men published a video clip on YouTube in which they danced on the gravestones to the rhythm of the rap.

This gesture, which was seen as disrespectful to the place and the dead, led to charges of violating Article 408 of the Italian Criminal Code, which criminalizes the desecration of graves.

Did the singer's origin aggravate the sentence?
The conviction was handed down at first instance by the court of the city of Gorizia (Gorizia) in 2020 with a sentence of eight months for the rapper and six months for his friend. The Court of Appeal of Trieste later confirmed the sentence. The rapper's defense lawyer had argued that the intention of the video was not to denigrate the fallen soldiers, but that it was an art form. The defense had also suggested that the rapper's African heritage had negatively influenced the verdict.

Despite these arguments, the Supreme Court in Rome rejected the appeal and confirmed the verdict. The judges made it clear that "reverence for the dead" must be respected regardless of the defendant's intentions. The ruling sets an important precedent for the case law on the denigration of gravesites.

Memorial once built under Mussolini
Redipuglia is the largest military cemetery in Europe with the remains of 100,000 fallen soldiers and is located 30 kilometers from Trieste. It was built under Benito Mussolini in 1938. The terraces are a symbolic representation of a gigantic soldier's cemetery, with three bright crosses at its highest point, reminiscent of Golgotha. Pope Francis visited the Redipuglia memorial on September 13, 2014 - 100 years after the start of the First World War.