See: Knoxing Italy's Justice System
It's "raising the specter of a long legal battle over her extradition."
"Prosecutor demands guilty verdict for Knox" by Colleen Barry | Associated Press, November 27, 2013
Despite the DNA evidence?
FLORENCE — An Italian prosecutor demanded Tuesday that an appellate court find Amanda Knox guilty of the 2007 murder of her British roommate, a killing he argued may have been rooted in arguments about cleanliness and triggered by a toilet left unflushed by the only man now in jail for the murder.
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Don't shit your pants over it.
Prosecutor Alessandro Crini called for 26-year sentences for Knox and Raffaele Sollecito, her codefendant and former boyfriend, following more than 10 hours of closing arguments over two days. Knox and Sollecito deny any involvement in the killing.
Crini departed from past scenarios by suggesting the crime was not so much sexually fueled — an erotic game that got out of control, as the lower court prosecutor described it — but an act of physical violence with a sexual expression.
He alleged that Knox and Sollecito acted in concert with another man in an explosion of violence sparked by tension between Knox and British student Meredith Kercher.
Crini argued that Rudy Guede — a native of Ivory Coast serving a 16-year sentence for the murder — may have inflamed tensions between Knox and Kercher after he defecated in a toilet inside the women’s apartment and did not flush.
That is disgusting.
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"Amanda Knox’s murder conviction upheld on appeal" by Colleen Barry | Associated Press, January 31, 2014
FLORENCE — In a statement from Seattle, where US student Amanda Knox had awaited the verdict at her mother’s home, Knox said she was ‘‘frightened and saddened’’ by the decision. She said it was ‘‘unjust’’ and the result of an overzealous prosecution and narrow-minded investigation that worked to ‘‘pervert the court of justice.’’
Turns out the ju$tice $y$tem in all countries is the same.
‘‘This has gotten out of hand,’’ she said. ‘‘Having been found innocent before, I expected better from the Italian justice system.’’
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Meredith Kercher, 21, was found dead Nov. 2, 2007, in a pool of blood in the bedroom of the apartment she and Knox shared in Perugia, where both were studying. Her throat had been slashed and she had been sexually assaulted....
A third defendant, Rudy Guede of Ivory Coast, was convicted in a separate trial and is serving a 16-year sentence for the murder.
Knox and Sollecito maintained they were at Sollecito’s apartment the night of the murder, smoking marijuana, watching a movie, and making love.
A statement from Knox after the ruling appeared less aimed at persuading Italy’s highest court to find her innocent in the upcoming appeal than at rallying supporters in the United States to resist a possible extradition request if the conviction is upheld....
I'm sorry if I don't care considering this government wouldn't extradite CIA agents that used US embassy cover to abduct, render, and black site "terrorism suspects" for torture and indefinite detention. Who gives a f*** about Foxy Knoxy's fate?
If the conviction is upheld, a lengthy extradition process would likely ensue with the State Department ultimately deciding whether to turn Knox back over to Italian authorities to finish serving her sentence.
That would be a very interesting situation!
Mary Fan, a former federal prosecutor who teaches at the University of Washington Law School in Seattle, said any decision by the State Department is ‘‘a matter of both law and politics.’’
‘‘The US courts don’t sit in judgment of another nation’s legal system,’’ Fan said. Nevertheless, ‘‘Many Americans are quite astonished buy the ups and downs in this case, and it’s the US that will ultimately be making the call about whether to extradite.’’
Do I look astonished? More like indifferent.
Just giving you what my pos Globe has given me, beloved reader?
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All over an unflushed toilet?
"Amanda Knox codefendant went to Austria briefly; Says he turned in papers voluntarily" by Colleen Barry and Nicole Winfield | Associated Press, February 01, 2014
FLORENCE, Italy — Amanda Knox’s ex-boyfriend left Italy and drove to Austria while an appeals court deliberated his fate, police said Friday, but he eventually returned to Italy and surrendered his passport following their joint conviction in the killing of British student Meredith Kercher.
Raffaele Sollecito’s lengthy travels were revealed on the same day that Knox made clear she would never voluntarily return to Italy to serve the 28½-year sentence handed down by an appeals court.
‘‘I will never go willingly back to the place,’’ she said on ABC’s Good Morning America program. ‘‘I’m going to fight this until the very end. It’s not right, and it’s not fair.’’
Lawyers for the pair have vowed to appeal the conviction, which upheld the 2009 verdict in the murder of Kercher, Knox’s roommate in the university town of Perugia.
Kercher was found in a pool of blood with her throat slit on Nov. 2, 2007, in their apartment.
Yeah, somehow the dead body keeps getting lost in all this.
Knox and Sollecito were arrested a few days later and served four years in prison before an appeals court acquitted them in 2011. Italy’s high court later threw out that acquittal and ordered a new trial, resulting in Thursday’s conviction.
Sollecito’s lawyer, Luca Maori, insisted his client was in the area of Italy’s northeastern border with Austria on Thursday because that’s where his current girlfriend lives. He said Sollecito went voluntarily to police to surrender his passport and ID papers.
But the head of the Udine police squad, Massimiliano Ortolan, said police were tipped off that Sollecito had checked into a hotel in Venzone, on the Italian side of the border, and they went to find him, waking him and his girlfriend up Friday morning and taking him to the police station in Udine.
No arrest warrant had been issued by the Florence court. But the court demanded that Sollecito turn over his passport and ID papers to prevent him from leaving the country....
‘‘I think it’s somewhat significant that, before the sentence was handed down, he left Florence where he had been and traveled many kilometers to get close to two frontiers, Slovenia and Austria,’’ Ortolan said. ‘‘It is a bit perplexing.’’
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Since the court did not order Sollecito detained, he was freed Friday afternoon and was seen driving away with his girlfriend.
Just as I'm ready to drive away from this story.
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Related: Serial killer fails to return to Genoa prison
On the flip side to the 2/1 Knox story was a photograph from Italy regarding floods in Rome with a guy in it up past his waist while at the gate of his home. No big deal I guess since I clipped a photo from November 6, 2013 that told me Venice is reaching historic high water marks. Just thought I would rattle you Italians a little.
I guess I just better back down like some other people that fail to get with the program and are tampering with things, huh?
I hear bells ringing for Berlusconi, don't you?
"Italy’s oldest family business avoids death knell via exports" by Lorenzo Totaro | Bloomberg News, November 28, 2013
ROME — Italy’s oldest family business looks abroad to dodge the economy at home with the Italian economy entering a third year of recession....
Italy is enduring its longest economic slump since records began after World War II. In the past five years, at least 37,000 Italian family companies have closed, according to the CGIA association of small businesses.
The euro region’s third-biggest economy will contract 1.9 percent this year before expanding 0.6 percent in 2014, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development reported this month. Private consumption will be unchanged next year as exports ‘‘are projected to gain further momentum’’ as ‘‘foreign demand accelerates,’’ the OECD said....
‘‘Any Italian manufacturer who wants to survive the crisis needs to sell abroad at least 80 percent,’’ said Carlo Alberto Carnevale Maffe, a professor of business strategy at Milan’s Bocconi University....
Ravaged by the debt crisis triggered in Greece four years ago, southern European countries are trying to export their way back to some sort of prosperity....
If you ain't in the top 1% that designed the whole system, you are getting poorer and less prosperous!
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And in it's wake:
"FACE IN THE CROWD -- Protesters clashed with antiriot police in downtown Rome on Thursday during a demonstration calling for an affordable housing and rejecting the Italian government's austerity measures (Boston Globe November 1 2013)."
Protesters only worth a printed photograph in my paper, I gue$$.
Time to end this post.
"Italy, US crack down on mafia drug smuggling" by Nicole Winfield | Associated Press, February 12, 2014
ROME — US and Italian authorities said Tuesday that they had broken up a new heroin and cocaine trafficking ring coordinated by Italy’s powerful ’Ndrangheta organized crime syndicate and New York City’s Gambino crime family. Seventeen people were arrested in Italy and another seven in New York, officials said.
Related: AmeriKa Media Missing the Target
So are the governments.
The investigation underscored how ’Ndrangheta is spreading its operations beyond Italy’s borders as it consolidates its position as one of the world’s most powerful drug traffickers, officials said. It also laid bare how the ’Ndrangheta, based in the southern region of Calabria, is encroaching on territory once occupied by the Cosa Nostra.
Italian police said the operation targeted a new cocaine trafficking route from South America to the southern Italian port of Gioia Tauro that united the Gambinos with the ’Ndrangheta. In exchange, the Italians were to provide heroin to the American market.
Is that the kind that killed Hoffman?
Officials said they thwarted the delivery to Italy of 500 kilograms of pure cocaine that was to have been hidden in shipments of canned coconuts and pineapples being shipped from Guyana to Gioia Tauro.
What is this garbage?
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Obviously, that crime syndicate was in competition with the world's biggest drug-running cartel, the CIA. Why do you think they were busted?
NEXT DAY UPDATE:
"Prime Minister Enrico Letta made a last-ditch pitch to hold on to power Wednesday amid a crescendo of calls from critics, including rivals in his own party, for a new leader who would pump life into Italy’s economy. Letta noted that growth was negative when he took office and now it has just started to turn positive. He said public debt has gone down for the first time in six years, in part thanks to his government’s efforts to privatize much of the sprawling state economy."
I'm sorry, folks, but I don't think I can read any more of this mixed me$$age $lop.
