Vallefoglia (Pesaro Urbino), August 29, 2026 – “We met at the darkest moment of my life.” Ilaria Cucchi, senator of the Alliance Greens and Left, opens her social media post where she announces the wedding with the Ferrara lawyer Fabio Anselmo. A love story, in fact, that truly began in a painful circumstance: “I had lost my brother in the most unjust way possible and he was the lawyer who chose to stand by me in that battle,” recalls Ilaria.
It was precisely the case of Stefano Cucchi, in 2009, that brought the lawyer and Ilaria Cucchi together, leading them to face many years of hearings, expert reports, and controversies before the judicial truth was recognized. And together in 2019 they wrote ‘Courage and Love. Justice for Stefano: our battle to reach the truth’. In the book, published by Rizzoli publishing house, they recount the ten years of judicial and human struggle to shed light on the death of Stefano Cucchi, which occurred on October 22, 2009. Among the pages, the behind-the-scenes of the legal battle and their relationship.
“We carried on this battle”
In her post Ilaria Cucchi recalls moments of her relationship with Anselmo: “We would never have met if things had gone differently. For years this thought was also a burden: how do you reconcile the greatest pain of your life with something that begins to resemble love? I don’t think there is an answer that fits everyone. We chose not to let grief become the only thing we are: to continue carrying on that battle, without giving up our own life, our loved ones, the possibility of being happy.” And so: “On August 29 we are getting married – she writes –. A simple ceremony, in the countryside, with our families, our four children as witnesses, and the people we love.
Those who have experienced “a loss know well that the world expects a precise script from you – she continues -: pain must remain pain, and nothing more. We have learned that you can live through grief without being prisoners of it. That the beauty around us will always remain, that everyone deserves to continue loving, to love for the first time in a new way, to be surprised by the energy that all this can give. We embrace everything: beauty, pain, surprise, a new energy.
Then she concludes: “Now we choose to continue doing so. Thanks to those who have always been close to us and to those who will be.”
The ceremony at the end of August in Pesaro Urbino
After years of courtrooms, family pains, and constant political and social commitment, the papers posted in Rome mark the formal beginning of a new chapter for the couple. Fabio Anselmo, a lawyer since 1984, has linked a fundamental part of his career to some of the most delicate cases of judicial news concerning deaths in custody or during interventions by law enforcement. Among his clients are the families of Federico Aldrovandi – the murder of the eighteen-year-old student was committed by some State Police officers on September 25, 2005 during a police check –, Riccardo Magherini, Giuseppe Uva, Michele Ferulli, Dino Budroni. Recently, Anselmo has also been following the family of Abderrahim Fakir, who died in Bologna in the Pilastro district after a police intervention.
