Friday, June 25, 2010
Amanda Knox’s Supporters Obtain Rome Embassy Cables About Knox, Prove Of No Help
Posted by True North
The American Embassy in Rome above, and the State Department in Washington below.
Ninety-nine percent of the reason why countries put embassies in other countries is because they really want to get along.
The US and Italy in fact do get along, extremely well, and there are thousands of transactions between the two countries every day. Thousands of Americans live in Italy, and millions of Americans are of Italian descent.
At the request of the US Administration, the Italian government recently put a large contingent of Italian troops in Afghanistan.
Under the US Freedom of Information Act, any American citizen can request and usually obtain astonishing amounts of official documentation, far beyond what can usually be extracted from the bureaucracies in most other countries.
Occasionally this information has embarrassed the department concerned, or the party in power in the Congress or the White House. But usually the documents are innocuous and without drama. Conspiracies simply never show up.
The blogger History Punk on his website Historiographic Anarchy has posted some cables (pdf format) from Rome to Washington, which report periodically on the Rome Embassy’s monitoring of Amanda Knox in Capanne Prison and her trial and appeals in Perugia.
As we would expect, these cables are extremely mundane. They were sent by a middle-level official in the consular section of the Rome Embassy to the Italy desk in the State Department.
They report carefully on the careful Italian legal process, and they never remark on anything wrong. No charges or claims or complaints are relayed from Amanda Knox. There is no talk of any anti-Americanism. No instructions, questions or comments are cabled from Washington in return.
One cable was not released. It was marked confidential and the contents are unknown. Here’s a guess at its contents: “Please keep those xenophobic ranters on a chain - they are doing the American cause in Italy no good at all”.
My first post here on TJMK and proud of it. This is a good fight I join.
Posted by True North on 06/25/10 at 06:38 PM in Defendants in court, Amanda Knox, The officially involved, Appeals 2009-2015, Florence 2014+, The legal followups, US etc related, The wider contexts, N America context, Hoaxers from 2007, Knox-Marriott PR
Comments
Thank you, True North! It is indeed a shrinking island, yes!
Here is what I found on Candace Dempsey’s site:
BREAKING NEWS: Amanda Knox will not get a new judge in her slander trial.
Updates: Amanda and Raffaele’s appeal date is November 23, 2010. More bad news for the defendants. Corriere dell’Umbria reports that Guiliano Mignini and Manuela Comodi may return as prosecutors for the appeal (alongside Assistant Attorney General Giancarlo Costagliola), insisting the case is “delicate, complex, and rich in nuance” (read circumstantial, evidence light) and thus requires the physical presence of prosecutors familiar with its every twitch. Legal, if not normal. Corriere says the prospect is giving the defense stomach aches and they’re not hiding their ill humor. Still, no judge assigned to the case. Meanwhile, Amanda’s parents head to court on July 6 for a preliminary hearing on slander charges. They face: Judge Carla Giangamboni (part of the Sonia Marra murder case investigation) and prosecutor Antonella Duchini. Look for Homicide chief Monica Napoleoni to once again sit in on the proceedings, frowning from a back table. she ordered the parents to be served shortly before the verdict last December. “
Posted by Patou on 06/25/10 at 09:11 PM | #
Thank you, indeed!
What those cables show is that a consular official had contact with both Amanda Knox and her legal team and neither of them flagged anything of concern. As you say they are routine.
As for Patou’s news….I think that can be summarised as: “The Italian Judicial system is getting on with the job in hand”.
Posted by Nolongeramember on 06/25/10 at 09:41 PM | #
You’ve got that needle pointed in the right direction, TN! Not a ruffle of a problem - the US State Dept’s(non)statement made it crystal clear they supported the Italian government from the start. Thanks for the write up!
Posted by Professor Snape on 06/26/10 at 12:29 AM | #
It is clearly evident that Amanda Knox and Knox’s PR Machine is treading deeper water with each passing day.
The official cable correspondences from the US State Department confirm what we already knew to be fact.
The cables expose yet another falsehood being propagated by Knox’s PR Machine.
The Italian judicial system has and will continue to serve justice to Meredith Kercher and her family.
Posted by True North on 06/26/10 at 03:48 AM | #
It also indicates that there is no discussions or plans between the Italian and US authorities to find a “way out” for Amanda Knox that would let the Italians “save face”, as some Knox supporters have suggested. Looks like Mandy is going to have to do her time.
Posted by Janus on 06/26/10 at 12:20 PM | #
This “saving face” argument used most recently by the bigoted sneerer Amy Jenkins is not only not grounded in any actual hard facts.
It is just ludicrous as applied to Italy and by extension to Perugia and Mignini and etc etc etc.
Face-saving is simply nowhere to be found now, if it ever really was. In fact I’ve never encountered it in European countries full-stop and I’ve dealt with a lot of top people in those countries.
And the idea of a mass face-saving? How far back in history do you have to go to find one of those? Can anyone think of any examples?
Posted by Peter Quennell on 06/26/10 at 04:11 PM | #
You’re quite right, Peter. Every single country makes it abundantly clear to its citizens than when you are in another country, you obey the laws and rules of that country, and if you do not do so, you are liable to their penalties. They couldn’t be clearer about that. They don’t say “if you break the law in another country, we’ll work to find a way out for you that everyone can live with - so relax and do what you want!”
The most you will ever see is something like a European country obtaining a guarantee from the US for a suspect facing a murder charge in the US that he will not face the death penalty, before they extradite him. After that, he’s on his own. That’s about it, I think. And that certainly doesn’t apply in this case.
Posted by Janus on 06/26/10 at 06:09 PM | #
The US Rome Embassy cable traffic picture clarifies more one year later. History Buff only obtained seven cables but Andrea Vogt has now obtained many more and has described them and posted one in a PDF.
Someone below that report sarcastically said History Buff obtained them all but that is wrong and in fact he didn’t.
Still no concerns by the Embassy or State showing through, and no action was called for.
We searched the Wikileaks of diplomatic cables releases but no cables at all on Knox showed up.
As we have said repeatedly, Hillary Clinton really does not want to move on this, and in Italy it is hard for the political level to affect the judicial level anyway as independence is strongly built in.
Senator Cantwell retreated to the sideline, we believe in part because we brought her Senate staffers into the full picture, which she clearly did not have. No more word from her for a year.
So that seems to be it for the political dimension. The PR campaign was largely for naught and did Knox and her family more harm than good and as always its up to the defense lawyers in court to do what they can with very little.
Posted by Peter Quennell on 05/18/11 at 02:46 PM | #
Commenting is not available in this channel entry.
Where next:
Click here to return to The Top Of The Front PageOr to next entry Italy’s LA7 Is Running A Series On The Rare Phenomenon For Italy Of Female Criminality
Or to previous entry The Aviello Story Seems To Show The RS & AK Defenses All But Concede Guilt Of All 3