Italian authorities have arrested a Ghanaian shepherd for allegedly killing an Ethiopian refugee and entrepreneur before raping her as she lay dying.
The suspect, 32-year-old Adams Suleimani, is said to have murdered Agitu Ideo Gudeta, 42, with a hammer.
Reports say Suleimani, an employee of the deceased, has confessed to the murder.
He allegedly killed Gudeta with the hammer during a dispute over unpaid salary.
Before her gruesome murder, Gudeta who fled Ethiopia in 2010 and made her home in the Valle dei Mocheni in Italy, was a shining migrant success story at a time of rising hostility towards immigrants in Italy.
She had become a symbol of integration in Italy by building a thriving cheese business in the Alpine countryside.
Gudeta was renowned for making goat cheese and beauty products on her farm La Capra Felice – the Happy Goat – which was built on previously abandoned land.
She had started the business with 15 goats and eight years after she had 180 goats.
“I created my space and made myself known, there was no resistance to me,” she said in a 2018 interview.
Still in 2018, she disclosed that she had received racial threats, and earlier this year a man was jailed for nine months for injuring Gudeta.
The man was initially questioned by Italian carabinieri over Gudeta’s death but was found to have no connection.
Instead, Suleimani was apprehended overnight and taken into custody after confessing to killing Gudeta.
Gudeta left Addis Ababa in 2010 after provoking local authorities by taking part in protests against government ‘land-grabbing’.
Activists including Gudeta had accused the authorities of setting aside large swathes of farmland for foreign investors.
