Rome, 19 May (LaPresse) – “I fear that what he says still does little to truly clarify what happened.” With these words, Fausto Giannelli, the lawyer representing Salim El Koudri – the 31-year-old accused of deliberately driving into a crowd in Modena – described his client’s mental state, speaking of a “confused” person unable to lucidly reconstruct the events of Saturday. According to the lawyer, the young man “remembers fragments, often only after I recount them to him myself”, whilst the most dramatic episodes “seem to resurface only partially”. A picture which, for the defence, would rule out, at least for now, the hypothesis of a terrorist motive and instead suggest “a very serious psychiatric condition”. The lawyer explained that the young man had reportedly said he thought he might die that day, but without ever expressing suicidal intentions. “He never said he wanted to kill himself,” the lawyer clarified. “He said he knew he might die, but not that he wanted to end it all.” However, the act itself remains unexplained: “He drove the car into the crowd. The videos are crystal clear. He ploughed into the people, seeking to cause a massacre.” The consequences of the attack are devastating. “There are people fighting for their lives, others will have their lives destroyed,” the lawyer noted, emphasising that the young man is still unable to explain the reason for his actions. “He just repeats: ‘I was going as fast as I could’.”