CIA v. State Department: A Significant Development For The Perugia Case?

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Our previous posts September 2009

http://truejustice.org/ee/index.php?/tjmk/comments/how_this_cable_car_in_the_dolomites_hangs_over_the_trial_in_perugia/

http://truejustice.org/ee/index.php?/tjmk/comments/why_the_prosecutors_in_italy_are_relatively_popular/

Our previous post June 2010:

http://truejustice.org/ee/index.php?/tjmk/comments/amanda_knoxs_supporters_incredible_shrinking_island_now_shrinks_some_m/

An Andrea Vogt update on the cables May 20l1:

http://www.seattlepi.com/amanda-knox/article/Cables-show-State-Department-has-monitored-Knox-1383417.php

FOA were very disappointed at the lack of suggestions in those Embassy cables that the investigation and trial had gone amiss.

They ridiculed Andrea Vogt for being late with the news but they were wrong - she had just got more cables not before seen.

Senator Cantwell might have tried to get the American ambassador to pull strings, but so far as we know he never did.

Some of the informed reader comments under some of the stories are saying that if Sabrina De Sousa and some others were not involved, as they claimed, they should have gone back to Italy and taken their chances in court.

The sure way to come across as really guilty - as Amanda Knox might foolishly choose to do next year - is to sit in Seattle and not let the court size them up.

It would be impossible to organize diplomatic immunity “retroactively” within the Italian territory.

There is no constitutional power in Italy who could stop the justice system retroactively.

The only option to save the 23 convicted is that the Italian government doesn’t forward a request of extradition. Or a pardon by the President.

I’m scanning the reports and the reader comments below them and so far the kind of bigotry Curt Knox and his hatechet men stirred up is nowhere to be seen.

The US overreached under the George Bush regime, and now a fair-minded but firm Italy is saying “never again”.

http://www.huntingtonnews.net/46191

There is a strong article by David Swason highly worth reading there. Opening paras:

Almost 10,000 Americans have sent messages to the Italian Embassy in Washington thanking Italy’s high court for upholding the conviction of 23 Americans (22 CIA officers and one military official) for the offense of kidnapping a man off the street in Milan on February 17, 2003, and shipping him to Egypt to be brutally tortured.

“La Legge E’ Uguale Per Tutti,” were the words on the wall behind the judges. Would that it were so. Those 10,000 messages, sent through the website of an organization I work for, RootsAction.org, also asked Italy to request the extradition of the 23 convicts, who are living free and immune from serious consequences in the United States.

If the law were the same for all, Italy would request extradition. If the law were the same for all, Italy would be able to kidnap the 23 and justify the act to the U.S. government by calling it “rendition.” If the law were the same for all, the United States would prosecute our own criminals and not have to rely on Italy to do so. If the law were the same for all, prosecutions of mid- to low-level operatives would be followed by prosecutions of the ultimate decision makers at the top, including U.S. presidents. If the law were the same for all, the U.S. government would be more interested in shipping 23 convicts to Italy to serve their sentences than in shipping WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to Sweden or the United States, in neither of which nations he has been convicted of or even charged with a crime.

And further down this extraordinary ode to the justice of Italy:

We need Italians’ help. We’re struggling on our own. We need a friend who doesn’t tell us pretty lies. We need a brother or a sister who gives it to us straight. We need the courageous principled action of the Italian courts to have consequences.

I don’t mind saying my nation is wrong. I said it when I protested U.S. Army base construction in Vicenza. I’m not asking for the United States to be stripped of the power to enforce its own laws. I’m asking for universal jurisdiction to be employed precisely where it must be, in those cases in which the relevant nation has failed. I’m asking for Italy to be able to enforce its own laws against everyone in equal manner.

It’s never been proven that torture enhances intelligence or security. In fact, to the contrary: people will “say anything” to end torture. There was a CIA guy who wrote a book about it recently (forget his name). He said the Bush administration had it exactly wrong: you have to win the trust and confidence of your captives to get viable information. It’s sort of like using the Stockholm syndrome in your favor. Water-boarding and electric shock are sadistic toys for little boys, who don’t know how to really do the proper intelligence gathering.

Not to mention the minor little matter that torture violates the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Good for Italy for standing up for the rights or all to due process and not to be tortured! Thanks, Pete for reporting on this!

I have a feeling the Italian government has no intention of requesting extradition for the CIA guys.  They have no desire to open another can of worms and be put in a position of jailing these guys.

As for Amanda, it might be interesting to speculate what a Romney Administration would do with an extradition request.

It does not matter whether the US extradites the CIA chaps; that is a mere formality and depends on several political factors.

Today the imprisonment (at least in an European prison) of a criminal is a symbolic affair. We are no more living in the good old days of “eye for an eye”. Deliverance of the justice lies in the pronouncement: what you did is wrong, then and now. I am happy with that.

I am sure that the Nasr alias Abu Omar was no saint but the greatness of the Italian system was that he was simply tolerated. But the most powerful country considered him a threat. And was worried. And was determined to do something, somehow, at any cost.

The judgement says it all loud and clear. Even the deaf can hear.

The race is not to the swift nor the battle to the strongest…

Where next:

Or to next entry Perugia Police Chief During 2008 Investigation Rises To Head Of National Anti-Mafia Department

Or to previous entry Compared To Italy, Say, Precisely How Wicked Is The United States?