Friday, March 06, 2015
The Sollecito Trial For “Honor Bound” #8: Passages For Which Gumbel & Sollecito Are Charged
Posted by Our Main Posters
1. Outcome Of Thursday Session In Court
That image above is of Sollecito arriving from his cell in Capanne Prison back in 2008.
The next session of the trial of Sollecito and Gumbel will be in open court for the first time. All Italy will finally KNOW some of what the pair claimed. Finally they will be able to judge the heated claims - seemingly intended to illegally inflame American public opinion to lean on the Italian court.
And as the next court session will fall after Cassation rules finally on his appeal against his lost Florence appeal for the murder of Meredith, we could see Sollecito once again arrive in court from behind bars.
This slight delay in the book trial beyond the Supreme Court ruling due late March (25th or thereafter) was the only real outcome from the final closed session yesterday of the Florence court.
Sollecito’s lawyer Alfredo Brizioli and Gumbel’s lawyer Francesca Bacecci, in creating a pretty meaningless fuss over the translation of passages where the malicious intent to inflame American public opinion is almost impossible to miss, even with Google Translate, simply bought Sollecito time beyond Cassation’s cold gaze on 25th March. The new translation is due on 10 April, and 30 April will be the pair’s next day in court.
2. Selection Of Passages The State Disputes
Picking passages in the book against which to lodge diffamazione and villipendio charges is like shooting fish in a barrel, as we showed in this post in April last year. That was twenty inflammatory charges in a mere half a dozen pages.
Targeted for the moment are the seven passages quoted in Part 3 below. They might be the first of several waves of passages against which diffamazione and villipendio charges are brought, as only one complainant (Dr Mignini) has so far asked the court to act, as he was required to do.
Many other people are talked about highly disparagingly in the Sollecito and Gumbel book too. See these examples, out of dozens, which are not yet the subject of a charge:
Our interrogators resorted to time-honored pressure techniques practiced by less-than-scrupulous law enforcement and intelligence agencies around the world. They brought us in at night, presented us with threats and promises, scared us half senseless, then offered us a way out with a few quick strokes of a pen.
Napoleoni was in the room for this part of the conversation. Without warning, she turned on me with venom in her voice. “What did you do?” she demanded. “You need to tell us. You don’t know what that cow, that whore, got up to!”
“Don’t I have the right to a lawyer?” I asked. They said no. “Can’t I at least call my father?” “You can’t call anyone.” They ordered me to put my cell phone on the desk.
At one point, I found myself alone with just one of the policemen. He leaned into me and hissed, “If you try to get up and leave, I’ll beat you into a pulp and kill you. I’ll leave you in a pool of blood.”
The rounds of questioning began all over again: “Tell us what happened! Did Amanda go out on the night of the murder? Why are you holding out on us? You’ve lost your head per una vacca””for a cow!”
As Amanda’s questioning continued, Prosecutor Mignini himself decided to take charge. He arrived at the Questura in the dead of night, apparently after being informed that Amanda had “broken,” and pressed her for a full confession. Again, Amanda was in floods of tears. Again, she was gesticulating with her hands and bringing them to her head””a detail that seemed particularly fascinating to Mignini, perhaps because hitting oneself in the head is sometimes associated with Masonic initiation rites.
Regarding that last claim Dr Mignini was not even there.
3 The Current Targets Of The Florence Court
Phrases of Sollecito and Gumbel (probably all or mostly of Gumbel) that look especially inflammatory and dishonest and very unlikely to be true are highlighted here.
Passage 1: Page 75
The main evidence Mignini had to take into the preliminary hearing was my Nikes, and he did everything he could to make them as incriminating as possible. Hours after my interrogators ordered me to take the shoes off, they were examined by a forensic team from Foligno. But the Foligno police were relatively cautious: in the official report they produced that same day, they said they could make no more than a partial comparison with the clearest of the prints left in blood in Meredith’s room and could comment only on the rough size and shape of the shoe, nothing more. Still, they concluded that my shoes “could have” created the footprints found at the crime scene.
Mignini was not satisfied, no doubt because the finding was couched in all sorts of caveats; the Foligno police stressed that the match was a theoretical possibility only. So the next day Mignini went to the Polizia Scientifica in Rome for a second opinion. They had even less information to go on than the Foligno team because they had only photographs of my shoes, not the shoes themselves. Somehow, though, they came to the much more definitive conclusion that my Nikes were the same make, model, and shoe size as the print on Meredith’s floor. No question about it.
Dr Mignini had no vested interest in the outcome of the shoe. There was a ton of other evidence which was accepted by the Matteini and Ricciarelli courts and Cassation to keep Sollecito locked up.
Passage 2: Pages 101-102
The prosecution’s tactics grew nastier, never more so than when Amanda was taken to the prison infirmary the day after Patrick’s release and told she had tested positive for HIV.
She was devastated. She wrote in her diary, “I don’t want to die. I want to get married and have children. I want to create something good. I want to get old. I want my time. I want my life. Why why why? I can’t believe this.”Â
For a week she was tormented with the idea that she would contract AIDS in prison, serving time for a crime she did not commit. But the whole thing was a ruse, designed to frighten her into admitting how many men she had slept with. When asked, she provided a list of her sexual partners, and the contraceptive method she had used with each. Only then was she told the test was a false positive.
To the prosecution, the information must have been a disappointment: seven partners in all, of whom four were boyfriends she had never made a secret of, and three she qualified as one-night stands. Rudy Guede was not on the list, and neither was anyone else who might prove useful in the case. She hadn’t been handing herself around like candy at Le Chic, as Patrick now alleged. She’d fooled around with two guys soon after arriving in Italy, neither of them at Patrick’s bar, and then she had been with me. Okay, so she was no Mother Teresa. But neither was she the whore of Babylon.
To compound the nastiness, the list was eventually leaked to the media, with the erroneous twist that the seven partners on the list were just the men she’d had since arriving in Perugia. Whatever one thought of Amanda and her free-spirited American attitude toward sex, this callous disregard for her privacy and her feelings was the behavior of savages.
It was in fact Knox’s idea to write the list of partners, and her own team’s idea to do the malicious leak. Police and prosecution had zero role.
Passage 3. Page 146-147
When my defense team examined the official paperwork, they noticed that the analysis of the footprints - including extensive inquiry into the length and shape of the foot likely to have produced them - had been conducted by two members of the Polizia Scientifica in Rome, working not in their official capacity but as private consultants charging thousands of euros to Mignini’s office. One of the analysts, Lorenzo Rinaldi, was a physicist, not a specialist in anatomy, and the other, Pietro Boemia, was a fingerprint technician with no further scientific credentials. That begged the question: if Mignini’s office felt it needed to contract the job out to private consultants, why wouldn’t it go to people with more pertinent qualifications? The whole thing stank.
We were stunned, too, to discover that some of the most important parts of the evidence were not handed over at all. We were given a document detailing the Polizia Scientifica’s conclusions about the DNA evidence on the knife and the bra clasp, but we had none of the raw data, nothing that would enable us to make our own independent evaluation. We put in a request for the data and, when it was rejected, filed another. The DNA evidence was now the bedrock of the case against me. What possible motivation could there be to withhold it?
The defenses had witnesses present at every single test. They made no complaints. And the Hellmann court record showed that all DNA data was in fact handed over, as the consultants C&V had to conceed.
Passage 4: Page 176-177
One of the reasons our hearings were so spread out was that Mignini was fighting his own, separate legal battle to fend off criminal charges of prosecutorial misconduct. He and a police inspector working on the Monster of Florence case stood accused of intimidating public officials and journalists by opening legal proceedings against them and tapping their phones without proper justification.
To Mignini, the case smacked of professional jealousy because the prosecutors in Florence resented his intrusion on a murder mystery they had struggled for so long to resolve. But Mignini’s behavior had already attracted international condemnation, never more so than when he threw the journalist most indefatigably devoted to following the Monster case, Mario Spezi, into jail for three weeks. Spezi had ridiculed Mignini’s theories about Francesco Narducci, the Perugian doctor whom Mignini suspected of being part of a satanic cult connected to the killings.
In response, Mignini accused Spezi himself of involvement in Narducci’s murder - even though the death had been ruled a suicide. It was a staggering power play, and the international Committee to Protect Journalists was soon on the case. Spezi was not initially told why he was being arrested and, like me, was denied access to a lawyer for days. Even Mignini, though, could not press murder charges without proving first that a murder had taken place, and Spezi was eventually let out.
I firmly believe that our trial was, among other things, a grand diversion intended to keep media attention away from Mignini’s legal battle in Florence and to provide him with the high-profile court victory he desperately needed to restore his reputation. Already in the pretrial hearing, Mignini had shown signs of hypersensitivity about his critics, in particular the handful of English-speaking investigators and reporters who had questioned his case against us early on. He issued an explicit warning that anyone hoping he would back off the Meredith Kercher case or resign should think again. “Nobody has left their post, and nobody will,” he said. “Let that be clear, in Perugia and beyond.”Â
Just as he had in the Monster of Florence case, Mignini used every tool at his disposal against his critics and adversaries. He spied on my family and tapped their phones. He went after Amanda not just for murder, but also for defaming Patrick Lumumba - whom she had implicated under duress and at the police’s suggestion. He opened or threatened about a dozen other legal cases against his critics in Italy and beyond. He charged Amanda’s parents with criminal defamation for repeating the accusation that she had been hit in the head while in custody. And he sued or threatened to sue an assortment of reporters, writers, and newspapers, either because they said negative things about him or the police directly or because they quoted others saying such things.
Mignini’s volley of lawsuits had an unmistakable chilling effect, especially on the Italian press, and played a clear role in tipping public opinion against us. We weren’t the only ones mounting the fight of our lives in court, and it was difficult not to interpret this legal onslaught as part of Mignini’s campaign to beat back the abuse-of-office charges. His approach seemed singularly vindictive. Not only did we have to sit in prison while the murder trial dragged on; it seemed he wanted to throw our friends and supporters - anyone who voiced a sympathetic opinion in public - into prison right alongside us.
Dr Mignini was facing mild charges for what in fact judges had okayed and for which prison or a career fall were never in the cards. Over a year before the book was written, Dr Mignini’s total rebound and promotion after Cassation sharply repudiated a rogue prosecutor and judge in Florence had been widely reported upon. It is also widely known now that Spezi and Preston were mounting a malicious self-serving hoax.
Passage 5: Page 185
One other strange thing: Amanda and I were on trial for sexual assault, yet Stefanoni confirmed that a stain on Meredith’s pillowcase that looked a lot like semen was never tested in her lab. She made all sorts of excuses about how testing it might compromise the lab’s ability to use the pillowcase for other things. The semen might well be old, she added, the result of Meredith’s consensual sexual relations with Giacomo Silenzi.
This seemed extraordinary to my defense team, so much so that we asked for - and obtained - permission to inspect the pillowcase ourselves and soon discovered signs of semen on one of Guede’s shoe prints. How could the prosecution have missed this? If the semen was fresh when Guede stepped on it, that meant it must have been produced on the night of the murder. We thought long and hard about demanding a full analysis, but we did not trust the Polizia Scientifica as far as we could spit and were deathly afraid they might choose to construe that the semen was mine. So we held back.
The is hardly what the Scientific Police - a much-trusted collaborator of the FBI - are known for. All tests are done with defense witnesses there.
Passage 6: Page 216-217
As it turned out, Massei may not have been entirely correct to say there was no evidence that DNA results were used to fit a predetermined story line. Giuliano Mignini, of all people, had given a television interview a couple of months earlier in which he stated quite openly that he was looking for a certain result from the kitchen-knife analysis.
Mignini was asked by a special correspondent for the show L’altra metà del crimine (The Other Half of the Crime) how he could be so sure my knife was the murder weapon when the DNA readings had come back “too low” and did not appear to conform to international standards. Mignini stuttered and danced around the question before replying in gloriously convoluted Italian, “Ho ottenuto di farlo risultare.” I managed to get it to come out right.
Never happened. As Cassation noted these so-called “international standards” which the consultants C&V misled the court about are simply a myth. The C&V laboratory and methods were disparaged by the Carabinieri lab in 2013.
Passage 7: Page 219-222
My family was not beating up on Amanda entirely without cause. What I did not know at the time, because they preferred not to fill me in, was that they were exploring what it would take for the prosecution to soften or drop the case against me. The advice they received was almost unanimous: the more I distanced myself from Amanda, the better. The legal community in Perugia was full of holes and leaks, and my family learned all sorts of things about the opinions being bandied about behind the scenes, including discussions within the prosecutor’s office. The bottom line: Mignini, they were told, was not all that interested in me except as a gateway to Amanda. He might indeed be willing to acknowledge I was innocent, but only if I gave him something in exchange, either by incriminating Amanda directly or by no longer vouching for her.
I’m glad my family did not include me in these discussions because I would have lost it completely. First, my uncle Giuseppe approached a lawyer in private practice in Perugia - with half an idea in his head that this new attorney could replace Maori - and asked what I could do to mitigate my dauntingly long sentence. The lawyer said I should accept a plea deal and confess to some of the lesser charges. I could, for instance, agree that I had helped clean up the murder scene but otherwise played no part in it. “He’d get a sentence of six to twelve years,” the lawyer said, “but because he has no priors the sentence would be suspended and he’d serve no more jail time.”Â
To their credit, my family knew I would never go for this. It made even them uncomfortable to contemplate me pleading guilty to something I had not done. It was, as my sister, Vanessa, put it, “not morally possible.”
The next line of inquiry was through a different lawyer, who was on close terms with Mignini and was even invited to the baptism of Mignini’s youngest child that summer. (Among the other guests at the baptism was Francesco Maresca, the Kerchers’ lawyer, who had long since aligned himself with Mignini in court.) This lawyer said he believed I was innocent, but he was also convinced that Amanda was guilty. He gave my family the strong impression that Mignini felt the same way. If true - and there was no way to confirm that - it was a clamorous revelation. How could a prosecutor believe in the innocence of a defendant and at the same time ask the courts to sentence him to life imprisonment? The lawyer offered to intercede with Mignini, but made no firm promises. He wasn’t willing to plead my cause, he said, but he would listen to anything the prosecutor had to offer.
Over the late spring and summer of 2010, my father used this lawyer as a back channel and maneuvered negotiations to a point where they believed Mignini and Comodi would be willing to meet with Giulia Bongiorno and hear what she had to say. When Papà presented this to Bongiorno, however, she was horrified and said she might have to drop the case altogether because the back channel was a serious violation of the rules of procedure. A private lawyer has no business talking to a prosecutor about a case, she explained, unless he is acting with the express permission of the defendant. It would be bad enough if the lawyer doing this was on my defense team; for an outside party to undertake such discussions not only risked landing me in deeper legal trouble, it also warranted disciplinary action from the Ordine degli Avvocati, the Italian equivalent of the Bar Association.
My father was mortified. He had no idea how dangerous a game he had been playing and wrote a letter to Bongiorno begging her to forgive him and stay on the case. He was at fault, he said, and it would be wrong to punish her client by withdrawing her services when I didn’t even know about the back channel, much less approve it. To his relief, Bongiorno relented.
My family, though, did not. Whenever they came to visit they would suggest some form of compromise with the truth. Mostly they asked why I couldn’t say I was asleep on the night of the murder and had no idea what Amanda got up to.
Sollecito himself had for years kept Knox at extreme arms length, mirroring his family, implying Knox was more guilty than he, though irrevocable evidence ties him to the scene of the crime too. He was never ever seen to stand up for her like this. Mignini and Comodi had NOT ONE CONVERSATION on these lines. Apart from the case against Sollecto being strong, no prosecutor in Italy has any power to “do a deal” or allow a perp to “cop a plea”. To prosecutors’ own great relief, for protection these powers reside ONLY in the hands of a judge.
Posted by Our Main Posters on 03/06/15 at 05:54 PM in Defendants in court, Raff Sollecito, The legal followups, Sollecito followup, Hoaxes against Italy, 1 Ital justice hoax, 2 Italian mileu hoax, 9 Mignini v Knox hoax, Hoaxes Sollecito etc, Hoaxers from 2007, More hoaxers, Raff Sollecito #2
Comments
Thanks…I will retweet now.
Posted by Tina on 03/07/15 at 01:33 AM | #
Note the last paragraph. This is Sollecito leaving the door open since that is exactly what he has been saying of late. True with some variation, but never the less that is what he has started to establish.
Posted by Grahame Rhodes on 03/07/15 at 04:33 AM | #
“they would suggest some form of compromise with the truth” - so they know what the truth is, God xxxx it, why in the hell, then, didn’t they advise him to tell the truth as it is, without any compromise?
Because the boy is guilty as proven in the court of law, that’s why.
Posted by Bjorn on 03/07/15 at 07:19 AM | #
There are many people in the USA who being American, (USA USA etc:) take it for granted that they can ride rough shod over every other country who they believe, being foreign, is therefore inferior. As an example, to them it is obvious that the American Jury system is far superior to any other world wide.
ISIS, al Jezeera, The Muslim Brotherhood, HAMAS Russia etc: have used this American mind set to further their propagandist aggression to great advantage. They use this in order to recruit others to their cause by pointing out that to them, America is either ‘The Great Satan’ or the great aggressor.
I find it indicative that those who support Amanda Knox unwittingly contribute to the ongoing propaganda of these self proclaimed American enemies and others who find the US attitude in this regard sickening, and use such interpretations to bolster their argument that the US population cares nothing for other countries or international agreements unless it is in their vested interest to do so.
Perhaps there are people who will disagree with this. OK! but try being with a group of American students on holiday in Italy or elsewhere who exhibit this superior mind set and you will see what I mean. It is therefore not surprising that the enemies of the USA use such things as the argument against the extradition of convicted murderer Amanda Knox to Italy as proof of this and use it to their own advantage.
Posted by Grahame Rhodes on 03/07/15 at 06:24 PM | #
One thing that isn’t clear to me: Did Raffy always do the ‘‘cops tortured me’’ routine, like Knox did, or was this a copycat act (after his release), to help sell books?
Yes, Knox would not shut up, but am curious what Sollecito’s ‘‘official position’’ on the ‘‘interrogation’’ was at the time.
Ghirga and Vedova backed off from Knox’s claims in 2008 and 2009 (and Giancarlo Costa walked out entirely in early 2008). What did Bongiorno and Maori say/do?
I read ‘‘Dis-Honor Bound’’ before, and the nonsense continues to amaze.
Peter? Anyone?
Posted by Chimera on 03/08/15 at 04:50 AM | #
Hello Lance
Sorry but perhaps my meaning was not clear. What I meant was that such groups that consider themselves against the West in general and the USA in particular, in other words the enemies of Western freedoms and lifestyles, will use their interpretation of the protection of a convicted murderer, such as Amanda Knox as proof that some factions of the US will try to protect their own by ignoring treaties and influencing public opinion and perceptions using such groups as Gogarty Marriot in spite of the overwhelming evidence of guilt.
For example, if the US were to deny extradition of Knox to Italy it would only reinforce the view held by anti US groups that the US is only a fair weather friend. I didn’t say I agree with it. On the contrary I am reporting what I have seen and experienced. As to nationalism. Sorry, but the US has the inside track on that. I realize that it may be difficult for someone on the inside of the USA to see this, after all what people on the inside consider normal is viewed by others as being anything but. ie “The onlooker sees all.” I’m not saying I agree with that either, it’s just a fact of life that other countries view the USA as being used to getting their own way in the world.
I have lived and worked in Rome and Rimini. Also in Cyprus plus Germany for many years during the cold war, Angola/Namibia during the attempted take over by SWAPO and South America during the attempted take over by the Communists through Cuba. I have also lived in Bermuda on the US base there which is part of the airport plus I have lived lived at the Canadian Radar tracking Base. plus all over that part of the world. My experience is such that no matter where you are everything stays relatively sane until the US spring break then no matter which country you are in all hell breaks loose. If this does not jibe with your experience then that’s good and indicates at least some hope for some part of the current student generation.
ISIS, the Muslim brotherhood, Hamas, al Jazeera et; al, will use anything at their disposal in order to influence and recruit the disenfranchised. Once more and to be clear, any anti US group will view and try to interpret protection of a convicted murderer as proof that in their view the US will not abide by international treaties. I hope this clarifies what I was trying to say.
Posted by Grahame Rhodes on 03/08/15 at 05:22 AM | #
Grahame,
The hatred that ISIS holds for Muslims, Jews, Christians and whomever disagree with them can in no way be justified by any sort of blame towards any other country. I am not aware of many Americans who wish to wipe out Jews and Christians. I have traveled quite extensively and worked on Cruise ships and by no means do Americans have a corner on “belligerence” or ‘belligerent behavior’. I do not see ISIS, al Jezeera, The Muslim Brotherhood, HAMAS in favor of Religious Freedom, Freedom of Speech and women’s rights. What I do see in these other groups is an attempt to silence all other forms of speech that are in favor of religious tolerance or correct treatment of women. I see hatred and intolerance and the desire to massacre any one who get in their way. I have been to Rome during Holiday and do you think Western European students are any better behaved than American students? Do not other nations have a strident sense of ‘nationalism’? There is a small minority of people in the Knox camp who are blinded by ignorance and certain folks in the media who want ratings and fame before Truth. I am not insulting your intelligence but this is a blog to see Justice done and not a rant against Americans in general. I doubt many in the Knox camp have ever traveled and dialogued in a meaningful way with other nationalities. I do not wish a war of words but I want to voice my concerns when ISIS is mentioned in the same breath as the U.S. and my desire is that we all be United in our effort to speak the Truth and see Justice done for poor Meredith and support her wonderful family by speaking out against unscrupulous pretenders . I have not met her family but I have seen a certain ‘dignity’ that her sister and brother have exhibited that as a follower of Christ, humbles me, as I do not believe I could show such restraint. I guess you can perceive this from my rant:)
Peace Grahame,
Sincerely,
Lance
Posted by Vinnie on 03/08/15 at 05:27 AM | #
The Meredith Kercher Wiki has a new translation of Raffaele Sollecito’s November 05, 2007 statement to the police, to update the incomplete translation we all had before http://themurderofmeredithkercher.com/Raffaele_Sollecito’s_Nov_5th_2007_Statement_to_the_Police
Copy sent to Peter for follow up with discussion. Esp. interesting is his last sentence “QA: She (Amanda Knox)always carried a big bag that she also had the night of November 1st.” Not so Honor Bound then, and worth comparing with what he actually wrote in his book.
Posted by Ergon on 03/08/15 at 06:20 AM | #
I have often watched Al-Jazeera (on TV) and read their articles (on the web; English version) and I think they only present a different view very professionally. They are basically a news organization based in Qatar (Doha) and in the International terminal at Doha they have a very nicely done display. That Americans don’t like Al-Jazeera is a different story (Bush wanted to bomb them because he did not like their reporting) altogether and I believe it is very very unfair to club them with ISIS which is a militant organisation.
I am sure most well-informed Americans will agree with me.
Posted by chami on 03/08/15 at 11:21 AM | #
Hello Chami Yes You’re right I was wrong concerning al-Jazeera. My mistake sorry about that.
Posted by Grahame Rhodes on 03/08/15 at 02:49 PM | #
Grahame,
Al-Jazeerah’s worldwide reporting these days is terrific. It doesnt tilt ISIS by any means, it is owned and run by the moderate-conservative Emir of Qatar, and has by far the best reporting on that whole region. It is giving BBC America a real run for its money and I watch it for at least an hour daily. Some of my Jewish friends in NYC have the same take.
I see the ISIS dynamic as purely sectarian (Sufi/Sunni/etc) with a long-suppressed underclass rising, roots going back hundreds of years in history with the prime meddlers being the British and French after WW1 who betrayed promises to everybody who helped them overthrow the Ottomans. Anti-Americanism seems to play little if any part in it.
There’s a remarkable new finding, that the seeds of the dual civil wars in Syria were sown by a drought which caused a million and a half to move in deep poverty to the cities and having got there received less than zero help from the government. No climate change, no ISIS.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/03/science/earth/study-links-syria-conflict-to-drought-caused-by-climate-change.html?_r=0
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/climate-change-hastened-the-syrian-war/
Posted by Peter Quennell on 03/08/15 at 02:52 PM | #
Hi Chimera
I dont recall Sollecito ever claiming anything remotely like the abuse his book claims about his 6 Nov interrogation.
Its not in his 2007 statement (almost the opposite) to Judge Matteini and his interview by her (which is over 30 pages), its not in the 2007 Mignini interview, its not in the 2008 appeal to Cassation, its not in his team’s 2008 statements to Judge Micheli, and in court in 2009 he sat there for days WITHOUT PROTEST hearing his interviewers on the night describe it quite differently.
This is something that continues to amaze us - that the team which really wrote the RS book and had a big hand in the AK book (Moore, Fischer, Sforza, and Gumbel for the RS book) had no slightest clue what was presented at great length in court in 2009.
Posted by Peter Quennell on 03/08/15 at 03:14 PM | #
Hi Vinnie + Lance
Nice sentiments. Very interesting. On only one minor point do I see differently. Its about how SOME American students react on arrival in Europe and specifically in Italy.
Studies have shown their alcohol and drug intake often doubles, Italians have claimed some come off ADHD drugs like Ritalin too quickly, and every year there are several bizarre incidents.
There has been a major attempt by colleges back in the States since Knox was convicted in 2009 to monitor such students more closely or distance themselves from such students so there is no possibility of liability in murder cases and other crimes.
I believe Knox deliberately did not seek UW financial help, or close ties & supervision, because she went to Perugia primarily to binge at a level even beyond what she was famous for on the Seattle campus.
Knox had a major source of drugs in Perugia long before she ever met RS and may have enabled a jump in his own taking which his father fought hard via financial means.
Posted by Peter Quennell on 03/08/15 at 03:52 PM | #
Yes Peter, Chami and Vinnie
OK you’re right of course and I was wrong. Apologies to al-Jazeera and anyone who’s feathers I have ruffled. I did not mean to lump them into the general scheme of things. By the way I read al-Jazeera as well.
However let me put to another way and make myself clearer. If Italy is denied extradition (God Forbid) then the rest of the world, no matter who or where or when will only confirm the long held suspicion in some areas that the USA, while wanting the extradition of Edward Snowden among many others will play the hypocrite by denying extradition of Knox to Italy. Thereby such a decision will play into the hands of the US self proclaimed enemies who will propagandize it as just another example of the policies they are trying to push. If this does not sit well with some people I’m sorry, but it is the truth. There can be no double standard here. The Knoxoholics are quite prepared to meddle in the affairs of a sovereign nation and impose their brand of justice upon another country. Whether they believe in innocence or guilt does not change the facts of this case one iota. Amanda Knox has been found guilty and in about 16 days that guilt will be confirmed once and for all.
Posted by Grahame Rhodes on 03/08/15 at 04:18 PM | #
Re the announcement above, Raffaele Sollecito’s statement has been renamed: Raffaele Sollecito’s November 06, 2007 Statement since that is when he signed it. There’s also a nifty signature of RS’s on the original PDF for our graphologists to peruse.
New URL is at http://themurderofmeredithkercher.com/Raffaele_Sollecito’s_Nov_6th_2007_Statement_to_the_Police
Posted by Ergon on 03/08/15 at 04:31 PM | #
Question and answer Sollecito
QA I remember we immediately went to the kitchen, we sat down and talked for a while, perhaps we had breakfast. In that circumstance Amanda told me that when she got to her house she found the entrance door wide open and some traces of blood in the small bathroom and she asked me if it sounded strange. I answered that it did and I also advised her to call her housemates. She said she had called Filomena but that Meredith was not answering.
So the door is wide open and there is blood in the bathroom and it sounds strange. Yet they supposedly had sat there and talked for a while, but he couldn’t remember if they had breakfast.
Consider what any innocent person would do? You would not sit there and try to remember if you had breakfast or not or sit around and chat.
“Oh by the way the door was wide open and there was blood in the bathroom pass the salt please.”
Posted by Grahame Rhodes on 03/08/15 at 04:57 PM | #
Hi Grahame
Absolutely right on the real political/diplomatic advantages of Knox’s extradition if it meets the legalities (which are very minimalist under the US/Italy treaty).
Her crime cannot be blamed on climate change, although it is probably not beyond the defense mob to try to capture another pet judge and have them say that.
In addition to the wording of the treaty and the strength of the real case, what are the strongest weapons in the State Department’s extradition armory?
1) Things Italy is sharing behind the scenes, like the corruption of Judge Hellmann, and Knox’s dangerous drug dealer, and the threatening behavior of the Steve Moores.
2) The very tough treatment State handed to ex-CIA team leader Robert Lady, really stiffing him, not bad considering Italy never even asked for him.
Now if we could find a link between Knox and the CIA that would really cook her (joking).
Posted by Peter Quennell on 03/08/15 at 05:18 PM | #
Hi Ergon
“Esp. interesting is his last sentence “QA: She (Amanda Knox)always carried a big bag that she also had the night of November 1st.” “
You are implying that Sollecito is hinting that Knox grabbed the biggest of his knives, and put it in that big bag when she (claimed to have) headed out alone, to give Patrick a piece of her mind?
Those two really have a way of getting inside one another’s minds, in a bad way. Like wasps in a bottle. I wonder how safe Patrick really was on that night.
Posted by Peter Quennell on 03/08/15 at 05:30 PM | #
Peter - Not very safe, as Knox kept his old (see you later) message. As she said in court she doesn’t normally, but have some excuse about not knowing how to delete incoming messages. One of the many things Massei found unbelievable.
I seriously doubt a language student would not know such a common English expression means something different in Italian. It was probably one of the first things she learned.
Kill the roommate, use her rent money for underwear and drugs, frame the black guy, pin it all on another black guy, then frame the ‘‘Mayor’’ and the cops. Then act like a victim and get a book deal. Psycho.
Oh, when does the Oggi trial start? Haven’t heard anything on it.
Posted by Chimera on 03/08/15 at 08:26 PM | #
The big red bag is as mysterious as the famous big blue dress.
From the language and style, I feel that the young kid has already divorced his night guest of two weeks. He clearly is not serious or sincere.
Posted by chami on 03/08/15 at 08:27 PM | #
Of course the big red bag has mysteriously disappeared.
If I know anything about human behavior then to denigrate an entire police force, jury system and by implication an entire country, then said country would start to look very hard for a big red bag and anything else they could find. It would not surprise me at the end of the day, if the police force in question produced the bag and the dress. “Always expect the unexpected” and I realize that the court evidence is closed, but that would not eliminate further examination of the discovery of some key elements of evidence from a P/R point of view. After all two can play the Gogarty Marriot game.
Posted by Grahame Rhodes on 03/08/15 at 10:31 PM | #
All is good with me and I admit I was not careful in my wording either. I know that I must be more specific when I am speaking about particular groups. Thank you for the insightful comments. I sometimes sign Vinnie or Lance, both nicknames, same person. Many thanks to Peter for keeping track of whats going on and the thoughtful community that make this blog what it is. I do not follow blogs but this one is exceptional 😊
Posted by Vinnie on 03/09/15 at 06:11 AM | #
Hi, Peter, RS indeed was pointing a very big finger at Knox to allude to the big knife she was carrying that night.
Posted by Ergon on 03/10/15 at 06:12 PM | #
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