Continuation Part 11: Amanda Knox/Raffaele Sollecito

[Dan O.]

The Buratti interview implies that there are transcribed recordings of Guede, not that the police tapped his phone.

Are those guilt tinted glasses interfering with your reading ability?

The basic element anyway, is that Buratti doesn't state nor implies that Lumumba's phone was tapped, even less that it was tapped before the 5th. I suggest you just admit that and close the topic.

It's right there in his testimony: Authorized wiretap, Lumumba, yes.

Buratti doesn't provide the chronology. But it is apparent that the police pulled the phone records for Amanda and Raffaele on the evening of the 2nd and the last interaction on Amanda's phone just prior to the time window for Meredith's murder was the text exchange with Patrick. This puts Patrick high on the suspect list by no later than the 3rd.

Patrick says this phone was always in the bar. The phone would be in police custody from the time of Patrick's arrest until the bar was returned to Patrick much later.

 

[anglolawyer]

This statement makes no sense. We all know that Knox was interrogated.
But we also know that Knox released a spontaneous statement before a magistrate, that she wrote false acusations herself, again and repeatedly and that she refused to clarify her statements subsequently. We also know that she claimed having incurred in a false memory syndrome, and not having been forced to lie under coercion.
All this is on paper, there is nothing to "believe":

No. Lumumba was a formal suspect for monts after his release. He was not exhonerated on the 20th; he was just released.

This all makes perfect sense in the looking glass world of Italian law: a person whom the police believe to be guilty (Amanda) is not a suspect but one against whom they have precisely nothing is.

The point I was making to Vibio was that, even on Lumumba's corrected version of what happened to him, he was pressured to 'confess' without legal assistance by the same people who tricked Raffaele and Amanda into a trap (the same ones who scratch peoples' cars, abuse their access to the police data base and lie about it - criminals IOW). No doubt someone will turn up article 104 of the code and remind us all once more what it says. I bet it's the one concerning terrorists or Mafiosi and thus inapplicable here.

 

[Kaosium]

Both explanations could be true. We won't be able to find out precisely, and the "system is overdetermined" in an engineering sense. Once the police had the blackmail evidence, they could stop the bugging. I believe that Patrick's pub remained closed after he was released from jail for a reason, and that it was to teach him to shut up about those "false" claims he was making against the police. Just to make sure, the police blackmailed him about something else, why not - it didn't really cost them any more. But I think they continued bugging Patrick - and I don't know if or when they stopped - in order to maintain control of (that is, stop) his potential human rights claims. I don't think it mattered to the police whether or not he left Italy; the important issue was the statute of limitations for police abuse. Again, it's difficult to be sure what his motivations are/were in his suit and comments against Amanda; it could be that he genuinely came to believe she was the source of his problems with the police, or he may have been responding to the "suggestions" of the police, or both.

My guess is that Patrick came to believe that Amanda was the ultimate source of his problems, had she not signed those statements Patrick probably felt he wouldn't have come to their attention regarding either this case or anything else they might have found 'investigating' him that they (may have) used to their advantage later. I do suspect the police (and/or prosecutors) found something and employed other methods to keep Patrick under control and probably aggressively instilled in Patrick the idea that Amanda was the ultimate cause of his problems as he spent two weeks in their care (in isolation?) and he procured a lawyer to sue her almost immediately upon release, an idea that may well have come from Mignini himself.

Oh, upon re-reading my message it occurred to me that a joke may not have come off the way I intended: William of Ockham (of course) didn't come to me in a dream and even were that possible he probably wouldn't sound like Red from 'That Seventies Show' (whose tagline is calling someone a dumbass).

 

[Kauffer]

No. Lumumba was a formal suspect for monts after his release. He was not exhonerated on the 20th; he was just released.

Oh I perfectly understand the problem of police forces refusing to release suspects formally from suspicion. This was a particular problem in the UK in the Joanna Yeates murder, which is being discussed again. A former suspect, Christopher Jefferies was not released in a timely fashion from police bail - he remained, disgracefully, on police bail even after the arrest and charge of the real murderer. Nevertheless, the idea that even the Perugian dumbcops considered there to be any remaining suspicion in connection with Lumumba after the 20th such that they would commence the tapping of his phone from that point on is ludicrous in the extreme.

 

[Kauffer]

It's not fallacious, because the finding also accepts that delay of access to counsel is anyway admissible, and security considerations may prevail on this. Which is what we are talking about with reference to Lumumba. His access to consuel was not prevented, it was delayed until the 8th.

Art. 104 does not have any specifical designation or limitation to mafia related cases. This is a false claim.

So, there is a justifiable national security/organised crime exception applied to the Kercher murder in order to effect the denial of counsel?? Is that basically it? Extraordinary grounds? Unbelievable!

 

[Dan O.]

P.S. By the way Buratti just the line before that says just "intercettazioni", not "wiretappings"; but also he is clearly NOT going in chronological order, this is clearly stated.

Original text
autorizzate le intercettazioni telefoniche.
​

We don't even need google to tell us that this is clearly saying "Authorized interception of telephone" aka wiretaps.

 

[Diocletus]

As for the ECHR interpretation of Convention art. 6 and 3., Enea vs. Italy and Mole vs. Italy sets the principles that defence rights can be partly sacrified on the bìground of compelling needs to protect the public interest to security, that is pretectig the ongoing of the investigation.
Decisions Salduz vs. Turkey and Simons vs. Belgium (the latter inadmissible) also stated that the right to counsel is not absolute from the moment of arrest, and may be delayed by ahtorities on grounds of public security.

As for the Italian law, the power to delay access to counsel is set in procedure code art. 104, §§ 3 and 4. This article was applied to all three suspects.

It's all well and good to deny access to counsel under some sort of "emergency" exception, but if the person makes statements during the period of counsel deprivation, those statements cannot be used to convict the person of a crime.

Here, the period of counsel deprivation started before Knox signed the 1:45 statement, and lasted until November 8. No statements made during that period can be used to convict.

 

[MDDVS]

It's all well and good to deny access to counsel under some sort of "emergency" exception, but if the person makes statements during the period of counsel deprivation, those statements cannot be used to convict the person of a crime.

Here, the period of counsel deprivation started before Knox signed the 1:45 statement, and lasted until November 8. No statements made during that period can be used to convict.

Note that the Simons vs. Belgium judgement says the exact opposite of Machiaveli's point, as I noted in my previous post.

 

[LondonJohn]

It's all well and good to deny access to counsel under some sort of "emergency" exception, but if the person makes statements during the period of counsel deprivation, those statements cannot be used to convict the person of a crime.

Here, the period of counsel deprivation started before Knox signed the 1:45 statement, and lasted until November 8. No statements made during that period can be used to convict.

Yes. And as Kauffer correctly pointed out a couple of posts further above, this part of Italian law is specifically designed to be used where there are criminal conspiracies of the organised-crime type, and/or where corrupt lawyers beholden to the suspects might reasonably be considered amenable to passing information from one suspect to another (or to other third parties, or to potential witnesses, etc). In other words, this denial of counsel is only to be used in extreme cases, almost always involving the Mafia or terrorists.

The fact is that Italy is known for police/PMs/judges routinely abusing this denial of counsel to suspects who clearly do not fall into the required category. I suspect that the ECHR will see this for exactly what it is: yet another systemic failure in the Italian criminal justice system and the corrupt/totalitarian way in which it is routinely applied.

 

[Kaosium]

The Knoxians never note that the famous DailyMail article about Lumumba's maltreatment by the police was published on the 25th of November.

The very next day on the 26th, Il Corriere della Sera published an interview with Lumumba where he says he was misquoted by the DailyMail.

In the interview he says:

"Non sono stato picchiato - afferma inoltre Lumumba. - Io ho detto che sono stato molto umiliato perché la polizia mi ha preso senza dirmi il motivo e poi la mia parola non valeva niente. Ma non ci sono stati atti di violenza. I poliziotti hanno fatto la faccia dura per farmi confessare. Non so come hanno trattato Amanda e Raffaele, ma io non sono stato trattato molto bene».

"I was not beaten, I said that I was very humiliated because the police came and got me without telling me why and my word was worth nothing. But there were no acts of violence. The police acted tough to get me to confess. I do not know how they treated Amanda and Raffaele, but I was not treated very well. "

He also says he was misquoted in his comments about Amanda. He's not as harsh about her in the Corriere article.

If you want to think that Lumumba made this Corriere interview because of pressure from the police in only 24 hours, ...well, I doubt it. And remember: the article was published in English and not (easily) available in Italy.

And furthermore: Lumumba did sue over his arrest. He won 8,000 euros for the 2 weeks he was in jail. And he felt that was not enough... he originally sued for 500,000 and so he sued again.

Kind of strange if he was so intimidated by the cops.

At that juncture the case was receiving major international attention, Patrick was reportedly paid 70k Euros for the 'Daily Mail' piece I linked. The police (mostly the Perugian Polizia di Stato) were very aware of the international coverage and gave favored (read: colpelovesti) reporters exclusive 'scoops' (read: disinformation) such as the bloodsoaked bathroom pic and the 'bleach receipts.' Those received either different or no treatment in the Italian press, they were disseminated only outside Italy. The Daily Mail is (or at least was then) one of the highest circulation tabloids in Britain. Incidentally they're also professional enough to get a recording of an interview like Hoyle's so the quotes in the piece can be substantiated if questioned, especially for a piece they paid so much money for.

Thus Patrick claiming something different in the Italian press the next day about his treatment in police hands and claiming he was 'misquoted' for the Daily Mail piece is damned curious. So is Patrick returning the money from the Italian Republic, especially if that last report I heard is true regarding him dropping the ECHR claim as well, which would explain why it cannot be currently found through HUDOC.

 

[acbytesla]

It's not fallacious, because the finding also accepts that delay of access to counsel is anyway admissible, and security considerations may prevail on this. Which is what we are talking about with reference to Lumumba. His access to consuel was not prevented, it was delayed until the 8th.

It is absurd to think that there were security concerns in prohibiting counsel to Amanda or Raffaele and I seriously doubt that anyone including Machiavelli actually believe that. This exception was clearly carved out for terrorism, organized crime and gang related offenses.

The idea that it was proper to deny counsel to Amanda and Raffaele based on this exception is dishonest and pretty much everyone knows that.

 

[LondonJohn]

The Knoxians never note that the famous DailyMail article about Lumumba's maltreatment by the police was published on the 25th of November.

The very next day on the 26th, Il Corriere della Sera published an interview with Lumumba where he says he was misquoted by the DailyMail.

In the interview he says:

"Non sono stato picchiato - afferma inoltre Lumumba. - Io ho detto che sono stato molto umiliato perché la polizia mi ha preso senza dirmi il motivo e poi la mia parola non valeva niente. Ma non ci sono stati atti di violenza. I poliziotti hanno fatto la faccia dura per farmi confessare. Non so come hanno trattato Amanda e Raffaele, ma io non sono stato trattato molto bene».

"I was not beaten, I said that I was very humiliated because the police came and got me without telling me why and my word was worth nothing. But there were no acts of violence. The police acted tough to get me to confess. I do not know how they treated Amanda and Raffaele, but I was not treated very well. "

He also says he was misquoted in his comments about Amanda. He's not as harsh about her in the Corriere article.

If you want to think that Lumumba made this Corriere interview because of pressure from the police in only 24 hours, ...well, I doubt it. And remember: the article was published in English and not (easily) available in Italy.

And furthermore: Lumumba did sue over his arrest. He won 8,000 euros for the 2 weeks he was in jail. And he felt that was not enough... he originally sued for 500,000 and so he sued again.

Kind of strange if he was so intimidated by the cops.

Ahahahahaha! You really think that the Mail (as scummy as it undoubtedly was in 2007) would wholesale invent - or dramatically overembellish - direct quotes from within quotation marks that are directly attributed to Lumumba, and which explicitly accuse the Italian police and PM of serious malpractice? You seriously think that?!

Let me tell you something about the UK national newspaper industry. They may be scumbags and they may routinely (at least in the recent past) abuse the rights of "little" people (e.g. Knox, Christopher Jefferies, etc), but they do NOT risk seriously defaming senior public officials and police officers. There is simply no way that these directly-attributed quotes from Lumumba would have been published had they not been checked by the legal department. They would have checked that the printed words were accurate translations of words that were actually spoken by Lumumba.

It's extraordinarily unlikely that this interview with Lumumba would not have been electronically recorded - either on a dictaphone if the interview was face-to-face, or via a recorded phone conversation. I therefore have little doubt that the legal dept of the Mail listened to Lumumba saying these words (in Italian or French, I'm guessing), and also obtained verification that the translation into English was accurate and fair.

Conclusion: Lumumba almost certainly did speak the Italian or French equivalent of the words attributed to him within quotation marks in that Mail article. And therefore Lumumba almost certainly did accuse the police of serious physical and racial abuse during his arrest, and also alleged further abuse and denial of rights once he was in custody.

And therefore, there are only two possibilities: either Lumumba was lying when he spoke those words to the Mail reporter, or he was telling the truth. At this point, it's extremely difficult to comprehend why he might have wanted to lie about this: surely there could be little or no potential upside to him for falsely accusing the Perugia police/PM of serious misconduct. I am heavily inclined therefore to believe he was telling the truth.

And within that interpretation, it's also very reasonable to explain why Lumumba might have come out very quickly and publicly refuted/disavowed these words: I think that either a) he - all by himself - realised that he was risking further problems with the police and prosecutors if he stuck to his (true) story of having been racially and physically abused, and therefore decided it would be in his best interests to state that he'd been misquoted etc; or b) he was contacted by a senior police officer or member of the prosecutors' office, who "strongly advised" him to issue a statement of disavowal (with the implicit threat that if he did not do so, he might find it somewhat *difficult* to continue to live and run a business in Perugia).

 

[LondonJohn]

It is absurd to think that there were security concerns in prohibiting counsel to Amanda or Raffaele and I seriously doubt that anyone including Machiavelli actually believe that. This exception was clearly carved out for terrorism, organized crime and gang related offenses.

The idea that it was proper to deny counsel to Amanda and Raffaele based on this exception is dishonest and pretty much everyone knows that.

Exactly. And the ECHR knows it too. Just as they saw round the unjust and improper application of similar restrictions in the Turkish courts.

Machiavelli simply doesn't seem to understand that just because an investigating judge in Italy said it was OK (or even if the Italian Supreme Court said it was OK), that doesn't mean it was OK. Pretty much by definition, every single instance of the ECHR finding that an applicant's human rights were denied in a national court is an automatic ruling that the national court (often up to the highest court in that country) got it wrong. Otherwise there would never be any ECHR judgements in favour of applicants, would there?

On this particular issue in this particular case, it's absolutely crystal clear to a disinterested observer that the law denying access to counsel was improperly applied to Knox and Sollecito, given the circumstances of the crime and their arrests. It should be a slam-dunk for the ECHR to decide that Knox and Sollecito were unfairly and improperly denied access to counsel.

 

[acbytesla]

Exactly. And the ECHR knows it too. Just as they saw round the unjust and improper application of similar restrictions in the Turkish courts.

Machiavelli simply doesn't seem to understand that just because an investigating judge in Italy said it was OK (or even if the Italian Supreme Court said it was OK), that doesn't mean it was OK. Pretty much by definition, every single instance of the ECHR finding that an applicant's human rights were denied in a national court is an automatic ruling that the national court (often up to the highest court in that country) got it wrong. Otherwise there would never be any ECHR judgements in favour of applicants, would there?

On this particular issue in this particular case, it's absolutely crystal clear to a disinterested observer that the law denying access to counsel was improperly applied to Knox and Sollecito, given the circumstances of the crime and their arrests. It should be a slam-dunk for the ECHR to decide that Knox and Sollecito were unfairly and improperly denied access to counsel.

I would think so, but I thought it was a slam dunk that the the Italian Supreme Court would uphold the NOT GUILTY verdicts. I've seen court cases in the US that are incredibly surprising as well, such as the recent Russ Faria case.

I don't really have that much faith in institutions right now. For the most part I do think they do the right thing, but every now and then I wonder ..."What the hell were they thinking?"

What makes me shake my head is to read these posts by Machiavelli where he says they were right in denying counsel. This comes off as incredibly disingenuous. It's an end justifying a means theme. I guess that type of mentality would be typical of the real Machiavelli, so maybe I shouldn't be surprised.

 

[Bill Williams]

Buratti never says Lumumba was tapped before 5th, it's time for you to quit. This obstinate attept to make up thing that don't exist doesn't make you look more credible and is not good to your understanding of things.

P.S. By the way Buratti just the line before that says just "intercettazioni", not "wiretappings"; but also he is clearly NOT going in chronological order, this is clearly stated.

This is like a cross between ping-pong and whack-a-mole.

If Buratti never says Lumumba was wire-tapped before the 5th....

What good would it have done to wiretap him after the fifth when Lumumba was in custody?

If Machiavelli has addressed this upthread, i apologize.

 

[Kauffer]

This is like a cross between ping-pong and whack-a-mole.

If Buratti never says Lumumba was wire-tapped before the 5th....

What good would it have done to wiretap him after the fifth when Lumumba was in custody?

If Machiavelli has addressed this upthread, i apologize.

No, he's skated over it. But he's on very thin ice

 

[anglolawyer]

No, he's skated over it. But he's on very thin ice

No he hasn't. He has helpfully explained that Lumumba remained a suspect even after being found to have had no involvement and released. Obviously, it was a matter of utmost importance to bug him in such circumstances. This is probably how they do it: by bugging everybody they can always say 'see? X is not a suspect because we also bugged Y, Z, A, B, C, D ... [etc ad infinitum]'

 

[acbytesla]

No he hasn't. He has helpfully explained that Lumumba remained a suspect even after being found to have had no involvement and released. Obviously, it was a matter of utmost importance to bug him in such circumstances. This is probably how they do it: by bugging everybody they can always say 'see? X is not a suspect because we also bugged Y, Z, A, B, C, D ... [etc ad infinitum]'

That's one way to look at it. I think they bugged Lumumba after they let him go so they could know that he was going to keep his mouth shut about the way that he was treated. If they heard a call where he was complaining about his treatment, a cop could show up on his doorstep and make sure that PL knew what they could do to him if he caused problems.

 

[Bill Williams]

Buratti never says Lumumba was tapped before 5th, it's time for you to quit. This obstinate attept to make up thing that don't exist doesn't make you look more credible and is not good to your understanding of things.

P.S. By the way Buratti just the line before that says just "intercettazioni", not "wiretappings"; but also he is clearly NOT going in chronological order, this is clearly stated.

This is like a cross between ping-pong and whack-a-mole.

If Buratti never says Lumumba was wire-tapped before the 5th....

What good would it have done to wiretap him after the fifth when Lumumba was in custody?

If Machiavelli has addressed this upthread, i apologize.

As always, Machiavelli is sticking to the most strict & literal meaning of Buratti. Specifically, that Buratti never literally said, "Lumumba was wire-tapped before the 5th."

And Kauffer, anglolawyer, and acbytesla remind the thread that he's skated over the implied meaning, that Mach. implies that Lumumba therefore remained a suspect even after being exonerated and released, and the bugging at that later time was probably to make sure that Lumumba was keeping to his part of the bargain - to change his story about his own arrest-treatment, and go forward with calunnia so that Mignini could slide the 1:45 am and 5:45 am "confessions" into the murder trial through the back door.

All because Machivaelli is suddenly going all literal, and sticking with the most strict meaning of what is otherwise obvious.

Should I, then, dust off that in his 2010 motivations report, Judge Massei never once mentioned, nor even implied, that Ak and/or RS exhibited any psychopathology in the least? But were otherwise normal, well achieving students, who (in Massei's world) made an inexplicable "choice for evil", because of drugs and being away from the normal boundaries of home-life?

That, too, seemed a sticking point for Machiavelli, who argued all manner of semantics to leave the door open for Massei implying what he never said.

What does Machiavelli apply strict literalistic-semantics in one example but not the other?

Upthread is speculation of Machiavelli's contacts within the former Perugian PM's office. One wonders why M. needs to play these semantic-games all in the defence of Mignini, regardless of the answer to that speculation.

 

[Kauffer]

It's right there in his testimony: Authorized wiretap, Lumumba, yes.

Buratti doesn't provide the chronology. But it is apparent that the police pulled the phone records for Amanda and Raffaele on the evening of the 2nd and the last interaction on Amanda's phone just prior to the time window for Meredith's murder was the text exchange with Patrick. This puts Patrick high on the suspect list by no later than the 3rd.

Patrick says this phone was always in the bar. The phone would be in police custody from the time of Patrick's arrest until the bar was returned to Patrick much later.

No he hasn't. He has helpfully explained that Lumumba remained a suspect even after being found to have had no involvement and released. Obviously, it was a matter of utmost importance to bug him in such circumstances. This is probably how they do it: by bugging everybody they can always say 'see? X is not a suspect because we also bugged Y, Z, A, B, C, D ... [etc ad infinitum]'

Lumumba was "officially" a suspect, according to Machiavelli - in the uk this would usually be characterised by police bail, when an individual is no longer in detention following an arrest - but Dan's observations are strong. If Lumumba's phone was tapped, it would have been done no later than the 3rd and I find it difficult to believe that it wasn't. And difficult to believe they would bother after the 20th - but I do like your observation that in Italy, the guy they think didn't do it is a suspect but the girl they think did, isn't.