Headsup: Disney's Hulu - mafia tool?! First warning already sent to the Knox series production team about the hoaxes and mafia connections. The Daily Beast's badly duped Grace Harrington calls it "the true story of Knox’s wrongful conviction of the murder of her roommate". Harrington should google "rocco sollecito" for why Italians hesitate to talk freely.

Category: Italian context

Thursday, March 29, 2012

Why Didn’t Giulia Bongiorno Fight A Lot Harder - For Meredith Kercher, The Real Victim Here?

Posted by Peter Quennell

1. Bongiono as proponent for female victims

Sollecito lead lawyer and parliamentarian Giulia Bongiorno is persistently prominent in the Italian news.

Here she is captured by paparrazi while walking her baby son Ian around Rome.  She is also in the news a lot for her political activities as a former senior member of the party of Silvio Berlusconi and possible future mayor of Palermo Sicily.

And she is fighting hard in court and the media for the interests of the passengers who were on the wrecked cruise ship Costa Concordia, and for the families whose loved ones died. 

She also runs a group called Double Defense with Italian-speaking Swiss supermodel Michelle Hunziker (images of both above). Michelle just got engaged to the Italian fashion heir Tomaso Trussardi so she also is a lot in the news. 

To raise funds for Double Defense they just co-hosted a glittering gala event in Milan. Many of Italy’s richest and most famous attended. Lots of money was raised.

So what is Double Defense?

Giulia Bongiorno and Michelle Hunziker founded Double Defense specifically to tilt the law and the courts more toward women who are the victims of violent crime. As Barbie Nadeau reports, that is much needed in Italy right now.

This description of Double Defense is from the Italian website Beautiful World.

Double Defense aims to help women who have suffered and are suffering domestic violence, physical or psychological, through assistance in the interpretation of the rules and regulations in force.

In addition to that the non-profit organization, born from a chance encounter between the Swiss showgirl and Bongiorno the lawyer, wants to raise awareness of this terrible phenomenon, promote a culture of nonviolence, and prevent passive acceptance and silence from being the only refuge of those who suffer such terrible and barbaric mistreatment.

There are many names known and loved who have decided to put their fame at the service of Double Defense. Anna Tatangelo, Federica Pellegrini, Francesco Totti, Nek, Ilary Blasi and Silvia Toffanin are some of the celebrities who support the non-profit organization which was created by the duo of Hunziker and Bongiorno. .

The Foundation has a new partnership with the Italian brand Pandorine. Co-promotion will include a new marathon and relay race in Piazza Castello, and a special type of bag that is symbolically called Women: completely white, perfect for summer, and bearing a meaningful and touching inscription…

2. Female victim here be damned

We wonder. Did it never occur to Giulia Bongiorno that one of the most prominent women victims in many years was in fact Meredith Kercher? A victim of a cruel and gratuitous murder? Seemingly the MOST deserving victim for Bongiorno to wage a fight for?

Maybe the answer was yes - back at trial in 2009.

Sollecito’s father seemed to have wanted to retain Ms Bongiorno because of her political clout, from wiretap mentions made public which seem to show zero belief in Sollecito’s innocence. Ms Bongiorno often seemed disinterested at trial, and even disappeared or failed to show once or twice.

She seemed from photos in court to have poor chemistry with Raffaele Sollecito, and we heard that both she and Luciano Ghirga were so disbelieving in the innocence of their clients and so irritated at the PR that they might walk and leave Knox and Sollecito to find new defense counsel. 

But in 2011 we saw something entirely different.

During the first appeal under Judge Hellman, Ms Bongiorno seemed to have other things on her mind than the truth of her client’s guilt or innocence, or the fact that the victim in this case, was a super-achieving woman. Meredith’s family being in another country, with few resources of their own, helped to enable an arrogant callousness.

She presumably could have used a win right about then against the justice system of Italy, in support of the beleagured PM Berlusconi, and she may have had (and still have) on her mind that run for the office of mayor in Palermo, Sicily.

Who knows what else might have been on her mind? But in 2011 she certainly mounted a scorched-earth, take-no-prisoners defense of Raffaele Sollecito, and the female victim Meredith be damned..

Bongiorno introduced the bizarre witnesses Alessi and Aviello to discredit Rudy Guede, and one of them (Aviello) openly claimed that he had committed perjury because bribes were being offered in his prison in exchange for testimony helpful to Sollecito. (That is still being investigated.)

Ms Bongiorno also went to remarkable lengths, with witness after witness after witness, to discredit Antonio Curatolo, the claimed observer of Knox and Sollecito in the park. Impartial lawyers think that Curatolo did still emerge as having seen something on the correct night, but he was now openly tarred as a heroin dealer, and in his report Judge Hellman displayed suspicion towards all of the witnesses.

Ms Bongiorno’s performances at trial and at appeal were like night and day.

3. Bongiorno as contemptible hypocrite

So two people who Ms Bongiorno may have always disbelieved and had little time and respect for presently walk free. While the precise kind of victim Bongiono now claims to go to bat for is simply shrugged off, with absolutely no sign of her caring.

Obviously not all women victims in her eyes are equal. Winning at all costs no matter the hurt is what she is really about.

Wednesday, March 14, 2012

Rome Appeal Court Rejects Vanessa Sollecito’s Appeal For Reinstatement In The Carabinieri

Posted by Peter Quennell

[Above and below: Francesco, father of Vanessa and Raffaele, outside their Bisceglie family home late 2011]


In 2008 Vanessa Sollecito and her father Francesco were caught on tape discussing the manipulation of Rome politicians into forcing changes upon the investigation team in Perugia.

Vanessa was fired from the Carabinieri the prestigious Italian national civil-military police force in November 2009 for demonstrating behavior and psychology inappropriate to a law enforcement officer’s job.

Our Italian poster ncountriside has just alerted us to the posting of the official statement that her appeal has been turned down.

The European Court is quoted in that report as confirming that national members have the right to fire official staff for psychological and behavioral cause.

The Carabinieri carried out a very thorough investigation which included the secret bugging of her mobile phone and her father’s phone. Jools translated one key conversation here. Her father suspects they are being bugged by the police but she blithely talks on, digging them in deeper.

This ruling was probably posted when Vanessa Sollecito was already in the air bound for Seattle (see the post below) but she would have known it was coming. This does not bode well for the criminal trial she faces along with her close family, possibly starting in Bari at the end of this month. The charges could incur prison terms.

The Sollecito family arc has almost never been reported on in the English language press. In 21 June 2008 Tom Kington of the Guardian did file this brief report.

The investigation into the murder of British student Meredith Kercher in Italy took a dramatic twist yesterday when the family of one of the suspects was accused of attempting to interfere with the inquiry.

Police tapping the phones of the father of Italian student Raffaele Sollecito overheard discussions that appeared to suggest plans being made to get senior politicians to use their influence and get detectives whom the Sollecitos considered hostile taken off the case. The phone tap information is in files handed over to lawyers as magistrate Giuliano Mignini officially completed the investigation into the strangling and stabbing of Kercher, from Surrey, who was found on 2 November semi-naked in a pool of blood in her bedroom in Perugia.

‘We’ve got to flay the Perugia flying squad,’ a family member was overheard saying, according to the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera. ‘If we can get rid of the head of homicide and that other one, we’ll be OK.’

Relatives of Sollecito, including his sister, a policewoman, were also overheard discussing politicians who could help their case. Giulia Buongiorno, a lawyer and MP in Silvio Berlusconi’s ruling coalition, has now been retained to represent Sollecito. ‘She can help out on this case at a political level,’ Sollecito’s father was overheard saying.

Sollecito’s father, Franco, a well-to-do doctor from Bari in southern Italy, has campaigned to prove his son’s innocence, even to the point of allegedly leaking to a TV station a video obtained from the crime scene showing Kercher’s corpse, as well as highlighting perceived errors by the investigators, including the delayed recovery of parts of Kercher’s bra strap which were found to carry Sollecito’s DNA.

Police are holding in custody Sollecito, 24; his former girlfriend and Kercher’s flatmate, American student Amanda Knox, 20; and a third suspect, Rudy Guede, 21. All three deny involvement in the vicious killing.

As you can see here, Italian reporting like that translated by Jools usually includes a lot more damning detail.

Saturday, March 10, 2012

International Monetary Fund Head Makes Encouraging Remarks About Italian Economy Turning Around

Posted by Peter Quennell

Nervous Italians with resources have in recent months been moving major sums to the UK and investing in the property market in London.

A recent survey published by agency Knight Frank shows that Italians have overtaken Russians as the leading buyers of prime London property. Since January, they have accounted for eight per cent of all sales in the area. Last year it was the Greeks, who more than doubled their spending on prime London as riots raged across Athens. This year, it is their cousins across the Adriatic who are opening their chequebooks. The total spend for Italians in prime London is estimated to be £408m for 2011, up from £185m in 2010…

Economic reports worsen daily. The Bank of Italy forecast the Italian economy to contract by 1.5 per cent this year, while employment is shrinking at its fastest rate since July 2009. The eurozone as a whole continues to be locked in crisis. Successive rescue packages have failed to improve things, and German lawmakers are reported to be preparing for Greece’s departure from the euro. Where Greece leads, there is a risk Spain, Portugal and Italy will follow…

Italians with the resources to do so have been taking their money out of the country as fast as they can. And where better to head than London? The capital’s history, shopping, culture and nightlife, as well as Britain’s reliable legal system, make it the clear target for a safe property investment.

Still, £408m is a drop in the bucket compared to the $2 trillion Italian economy.  And that take on the economy is somewhat behind the curve. Bloomberg business news reports that Italian government bond sales are now going really well.

Italian 10-year bonds rose for a ninth week, the longest run of gains since 1998, as the European Central Bank signaled the economy is stabilizing and Greece won the world’s biggest sovereign-debt restructuring.

And of Prime Minister Mario Monti, Christine Lagarde of the IMF just had this to say.

At a dinner for delegates to the Women in the World Summit in New York City on Thursday night, International Monetary Fund Managing Director Christine Lagarde singled out one man as a beacon of hope in the bleak global economy.

Since the technocrat Mario Monti replaced the infamously irresponsible Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi in November, Italy is no longer the most disastrous problem facing the European economy, she said.

The trust of investors is being restored and “it could well be that Italy is going to be the light of the European tunnel,” said Lagarde. “I would not short Italy, at all.”

Nobody responded yet to European leaders’ recent loud lament that austerity programs will not turn Europe around and a stronger sense of how growth works is required.

Next week we’ll give it a shot!

Friday, March 09, 2012

Cruise Ships Told To Keep Well Away From Picturesque But Fragile Coastal Points

Posted by Peter Quennell

New maritime instruction from the Italian government

Included are Venice, the Amalfi coast, Capri and some other islands, and the Italian Riviera, all below

Saturday, February 04, 2012

Good News For Hard-Pressed Italy On Economic Growth On Two Surprise Fronts

Posted by Peter Quennell

Demonstrations against forced austerity are happening daily in Italy, and along with all other arms of government justice is being impacted.

We hope this wont affect a just resolution of Meredith’s case - but who knows?  Two things happened last week that might help to keep justice on the rails.

At last week’s Euro summit European leaders (video above) showed they are waking up to the fact that austerity programs like Italy’‘s and Greece’s and Spain’s alone could do permanent nightmarish damage.

Italy’s youth unemployment has just passed 30 percent and Greece’s and Spain’s passed 50 percent a few weeks ago. High levels of unemployment like this could be permanently baked in if austerity is the only “solution” entered into.

The UN’s International Monetary Fund located in Washington United States has long been criticised for austerity and excessive concerns over equilibriums which often nip growth in the bud.

But at the annual economic forum in Davos Switzerland the head of the IMF of all people showed a promising new face. She actually came out and said European austerity is not enough and active growth measures are also absolutely vital.  Here is the BBC’s report.

But neither the European leaders nor the IMF head described last week what such active growth measures would look like. It’s still blind leading the blind. They are all late to the game that the Asian economies have got quite good at (at their present level) in recent years.

Next post: the art of the possible. What cutting-edge state-of-the-art growth measures actually look like.

Friday, December 30, 2011

NYC Turns To The Only Country In The World That Can Handle Two Ultra Complex Projects

Posted by Peter Quennell

New York City turns to (of course!) Italy for two large infrastructure projects.

One project is the laying of a 660 megawatt power cable diagonally across the Hudson from midtown Manhattan to Edgewater in New Jersey just below the George Washington Bridge.

The ultra high capacity cable was manufactured in Italy and is now being laid by a specialized Italian cable laying vessel, the Giulio Verne (home port Naples), which every night is lit up on the Hudson like a Christmas tree.

The ship digs and backfills a trench for the cable as it goes. The Italian crew is fired up with expresso coffees every hour on the hour as this New York Times article describes.

The other project is the excavation, now largely complete, of three tunnels through Manhattan’s hard granite using giant Italian-made tunnel boring machines which are half a mile long and cost $10 to $20 million for each one. They are assembled below ground and only ever used once.

The tunnels are the Second Avenue subway, the East Side Access to allow Long Island trains to arrive at a new station deep below Grand Central Station, and the extension of the 7 subway from Times Square to 34th Street on the west side and possibly also to New Jersey.

Italy excels at these large and complicated projects. Some of the autostradas which sweep through the mountains along tunnels and bridges are astonishing. Two very large Italian projects due to begin soon are the re-engineering of Venice to stop it sinking, and the suspension bridge (the world’s longest) between the Italian mainland and Sicily.

Perugia has its share of dazzling projects too. The minimetro already running and soon one of the world’s longest escalators which may result in Meredith’s house coming down to allow for parking expansion.

Tuesday, November 22, 2011

Mignini’s And Giuttari’s Florence Convictions Are Annulled: No Evidence, And No Jurisdiction

Posted by Peter Quennell

The ANSA news service is reporting that Giuliano Mignini’s and Michele Giuttari’s 2010 convictions have been annulled.

The Florence appeal court ruled scathingly that no evidence exists and also that the Florence trial court did not have jurisdiction. The case might be looked at again by the prosecutors in Turin or Genoa, which Mignini and Giuttari favor to get the spurious case against them more than just annulled. They’d like its root causes brought out. .

Mignini had caught the exact-same Florence prosecutor on tape, with a judge’s consent, bewailing the fact that the Monster of Florence cabal was tying his hands. That trial was simple a panicky attempt to get himself out from under which will hurt his career and the trail judge’s too.

It wasn’t Mignini who invented the Florence cabal (or satanic sect) notion, and he is suspicious of people (like Preston and Spezi) who work so hard to deny it.  Many of the Italian Monster of Florence books also argue 180 degrees away from Preston. Hmmm. What hold does the Monster of Florence sect have over Preston? Is he a secret satanist?! The world really wants to know…

Mignin’s quoted remarks outside the appeal court make it sound like he would like to resume the investigation of why Dr Narducci died suspiciously in Lake Trasimeno. That had to be halted because the Florence prosecutor seized all the papers on the case.

We have posted several times as much on Mignini as most of the UK and US media combined, and we translated a long email from him, and two long and very revealing interviews.

Kermit’s contrast of Preston’s satanic obsessions with Mignini’s really very mundane interests are an absolute must-view.

Tuesday, November 15, 2011

Italian Lawyers Strategically Timed Strike This Week Causes Postponement Of Knox Calunnia Case

Posted by Peter Quennell

The legal action for criminal slander against Amanda Knox brought by those she claimed maltreated her at an interrogation (not by Mignini) is postponed to mid-May 2012.

This has the effect of putting the court dates past the release of the Hellman sentencing report due latest at year’s end and the filing of the grounds for appeal before the Supreme Court of Cassation due six weeks later.

The main lawyers union in Italy has chosen this week for their industrial action to protest the recent history of extreme political pressure by ex-PM Berlusconi’s party on the justice system, resulting in among other things the underfunding of the police’s forensic operations.

The lawyers’ union also has a long list of requested legal reforms which has long been stalled in the parliament. Lawyers are not expected to be alone in making their bids forcefully in this period as the Italian public sector budgets shrink.

Amanda Knox’s position on the calunnia charge seems weak as she herself at other times said she was treated well, she cannot identify who she claims hit her, and she has no witnesses corroborating her story and up to a dozen denying it.

Her own lawyers filed no mistreatment complaint and very publicly in a media crowd said no hitting ever happened. Knox has already served a three year sentence for criminal slander against Patrick Lumumba.

Most trials for calunnia, a serious charge due to the personal damage inflicted, result in conviction.

Friday, November 11, 2011

Italy Really Lucks Out With An Exceptional President And Now An Exceptional New Prime Minister

Posted by Peter Quennell

Italy already possesses in President Napolitano one of the more popular and effective presidents in the world

Now President Napolitano has handpicked Dr Mario Monti to succeed PM Silvio Berlusconi, starting out perhaps as soon as tomorrow. Dr Monti is the president of one of Italy’s premier business schools in Milan, and he has twice been elected a European commissioner.

Other heads of government and stock and bond markets around the world seem increasingly optimistic that Italy can now manage to pull out of its nosedive. Italy’s austerity package as mandated by the EC has already been passed by the upper house in the Rome parliament.

Below is the only video (a few months old) we can spot in which Mario Monti speaks in English at length. And here in Business Insider is a short balanced assessment of Italy’s new prospects.

So. Fingers crossed but the trend looks promising. Enjoy your very overdue retirement, Mr Berlusconi. Keep out of prison…

 

Tuesday, November 08, 2011

With Less Than 1/4 Of Italians Polled Supporting Him PM Berlusconi May Be Toast Later Today

Posted by Peter Quennell

Breaking news. Stocks jump in Europe and the US on the news that PM Berlusconi has told the President of the Italian republic he will soon resign.

PM Berlusconi let it be known several weeks ago that he had agreed with his coalition partners to be gone by this Christmas.

Global stockmarkets liked that as there has for a while existed a premium built in to his going. But several days ago he was reported as having done a U-turn, and was now intent on hanging on.

Not least so he can keep one step ahead of Milan prosecutors who have lined up three cases against him. And Perugia (yes Perugia) prosecutors investigating his close buddies for milking contracts for the 2006 winter Olympics and 2010 earthquake rebuild. 

Today there will be a routine budget vote in the Italian parliament - but Mr Berlusconi has attached to it a vote of confidence in himself. This is from the investors’ website The Street.

Italian politics remains in the spotlight. The Italian bond market’s off-the-run 10-year yields are currently at 6.591%. The Italian government will submit a routine budget for Parliament to vote today, with Berlusconi attaching a confidence vote to a failed budgetary outcome. From there, if the government fails to reach a majority of 316 votes for a confidence vote, Berlusconi will be forced to resign his post.

Ahead of the vote, speculation about the prime minister’s imminent departure is rife and markets have welcomed the prospect. In Italy’s fragmented political landscape, his departure would not necessarily mean that austerity measures will pass quicker.

If the Berlusconi government falls, the first choice would likely be to see if a new coalition government can be formed with the existing parliament. This is likely to be supportive of risk appetite in the short term, but it would end quickly if a coalition could not be formed and the fall in the government were to lead to elections. This would ultimately delay the passage of the austerity measures and sap business and investor confidence even further.

Nevertheless, from here the best outcome for market sentiment in is likely to be a resignation of Berlusconi followed by the formation of a new government from the existing parliament.

And this “et tu Brute” report was just posted online by the National Post.

Silvio Berlusconi’s closest coalition ally Umberto Bossi told him to resign on Tuesday in what could be a mortal blow to the Italian prime minister.

Bossi, head of the devolutionist Northern League, said the 75-year-old media magnate should be replaced by Angelino Alfano [image below] secretary of the premier’s PDL party.

“We asked the prime minister to stand down,” Bossi told reporters outside parliament.

Odds are Mr Berlusconi will be gone today later today or very soon and there will be national elections within six months. Hopefully the incessant political meddling with the Italian justice system, which we suspect affected the Perugia appeal verdict, will then cease.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is said to have favored Berlusconi’s short-term survival, but these days irritated markets speak louder than politicians’ words.

[Below right: Mr Angelino Alfano, Mr Berlusconi’s most likely immediate successor]