Hundreds of people flocked to the Stazione Leopolda...

Hundreds of people flocked to the Stazione Leopolda in Florence yesterday for a concert-debate against the death penalty that was also an occasion to celebrate Safiya's release.
The event was part of HOC's continuing campaign for a moratorium on executions through a UN resolution.
It came one day after the release in Nigeria of Safiya Hussaini, whose death sentence for having a baby out of wedlock raised a huge international uproar.
"The death penalty is a disgrace, it's the great blight of our planet," said Jovanotti to a huge burst of applause from the hundreds of people crowding the former train station warehouse where the event took place.
"No state can give life, and thus is has no right to take life," the highly popular Italian rapper said.
The evening featured the preview of L'Orfano, a video by controversial photographer Oliviero Toscani on Paolo Pasimeni, a 23-year-old student from Padova who confessed to killing his father and burning his body after an argument over University exams last year.
The half-hour video of Pasimeni, filmed in close-ups of his face using three different camera angles simultaneously and projected on three large overhead screens, was shown in four fragments, punctuated with debate between singer Leandro Barsotti- who along with Toscani was the creator of the event - HOC Secretary Sergio D'Elia, rapper Jovanotti, pop-rock singer Enrico Ruggeri and TV presenters Gianfranco Monti and Alberto Lorenzini.
Paolo describing his childhood, his difficult relationship with a largely absent, but authoritative father, his dead mother, his life in prison and his feelings of alienation and pain regarding the crime he committed held the audience in attentive silence, which erupted in cheers and singing when Ruggeri took the stage.
Psychiatrist Paolo Crepet provided the psychological insight to on the ills of modern day society, that may lead young people to commit crimes, and spoke out against the futility of the current jail system in rehabilitating disturbed people, who ought to be helped rather than locked up, or worse executed.
Regione Toscana president Claudio Martini, who kicked off the evening reminding the prevalently Florentine audience that the Grand Duchy of Tuscany was the first modern state to abolish the death penalty, rounded up with a touching rendition of the late songwriter Fabrizio de Andre 's Ballata del Miché, a ballad about a man who hanged himself after ending up in prison for a passion crime.