Wednesday, July 10, 2013

Appeal Starts 30 Sept: Why This Man Could Stop Defense Dirty Tricks In Their Tracks

Posted by Peter Quennell





Deputy Chief Prosecutor Armando Spataro.in Milan is one of the toughest prosecutors in Italy.

In September Florence’s current chief prosecutor Giuseppe Quattrocchi will retire - and Dr Spataro is considered to be the frontrunner to take his place.

The Florence prosecution team is being made even more formidably tough these days because it has some very high-profile cases involving national politicians and corruption on its hands.

Read Yummi’s detailed post of 21 January which explains much of this context - and why Florence will be very averse to the dirty tricks the Knox-Sollecito defenses and their allies were able to pull in Perugia.

Florence was the jurisdiction where a rogue prosecutor and a rogue judge sentenced Dr Mignini for what Cassation scathingly declared were fully legal actions, when it recently killed a trumped-up case against him and Dr Michele Giuttari stone dead - and opened the way to Dr Mignini being the next chief prosecutor in Perugia.

Dr Spataro will be especially formidable against Knox and Sollecito and their army of shoot-themselves-in-the-foot defamers because he has stood up to strong Italian government and American government pressures before. Our September 2009 post explained:

Italy’s a tough country with, albeit dwindling now, a legacy of violent crime, and many brave prosecutors over the years have been assassinated.

And the Italian legal system is not particularly weighted in their direction, with a large number of hurdles they have to climb over before a case ever gets to trial.

And the Italian prison system is relatively lenient, heavily pro-prisoner-remediation and early release, and proportionally only 1/10 the size of the US’s.

So the endemic attempts to undermine Prosecutor Mignini have invariably won only MORE popular support for him and his case in Perugia and Italy in general.

And the only “criminal charge” against him (it isn’t) seems to flow from his guessing right in the Monster of Florence case - and apparently no charge of this kind has ever won a “conviction”.

Above is Milan Deputy Chief Prosecutor Armando Spataro.  He is in the news now because he has demanded prison sentences for TWENTY-SIX Americans.

Between them they seem to have colluded in grabbing Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr, an Egyptian in Italy, back in President Bush’s day, and taking him off to be tortured.

Not to the United States where torture is not legal, but to Egypt where it more-or-less is.

Human rights advocates charge that renditions were the CIA’s way to outsource the torture of prisoners to countries where it was practiced.

The CIA has declined to comment on the Italian case, and all the Americans are being tried in absentia and are considered fugitives.

As we remarked in [another] post it is pretty hard for a foreign government and especially now the American government to throw sand in the Italian wheels of justice.
ut
The American government is really just sitting this one out. And it may be covertly delighted when Amanda Knox and her clan fade to silence.

Dr Spataro went on to win that case against the 26. Although their extradition is not yet being pushed,-for, the State Department sided with Italy and gave them no immunity.

State was even sued over that, but good Italy-America relations were deemed important enough to come first.

Posted by Peter Quennell on 07/10/13 at 06:03 PM in The officially involved,  The prosecutors,  Appeals 2009-2015,  Florence 2014+

Comments

Pete, come September 30th an irresistible prosecutorial force meets the immovable-object of AK/RS defence.

In such a case the IPF rolls over the IO.

Posted by Cardiol MD on 07/11/13 at 12:19 AM | #

Dr. Spataro sounds worthy. Milan is lucky to have him. The legacy of violence in Italy must have sieved out the uncommitted.

Mignini hangs a photograph on the wall above his desk of Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, two Sicilian anti-mafia prosecutors who were assassinated in 1992. Great men respect other great men. (see Follain, “Death in Perugia”, p. 150)

Posted by Hopeful on 07/11/13 at 12:33 AM | #

I love it when something is formidably against Knox!

Posted by Jeff Friend on 07/11/13 at 03:45 AM | #

Hi jeffshana Yes we’re all here.

Posted by Grahame Rhodes on 07/11/13 at 03:56 AM | #

I would imagine the announcement of the start of appeal will see Sollecito feeling ever more cornered.

I take the Knox camps complete silence as proof that they are running scared!  So much for Knox’s claims that she would not be quiet!

Posted by MHILL4 on 07/11/13 at 02:28 PM | #
Commenting is not available in this channel entry.

Where next:

Click here to return to The Top Of The Front Page

Or to next entry Fast Forwarding And Minimalizing Demanded By Cassation Could See Appeal Conclude This Year

Or to previous entry Crazed Rant Against Judge Massei Expected to Hurt Prospects For Both Sollecito And Knox