Continuation Part Seven: Discussion of the Amanda Knox/Raffaele Sollecito case

[LondonJohn]

Hmmm, well now you seem to be saying Amanda imagined the police yelling at her asking who she sent the message to and who she was protecting. Of course, those are questions which would be especially puzzling if they actually did have Patrick's message in front of them. If they didn't, then arguably they couldn't be sure the message had been sent to Patrick, since they only had Amanda's word for that.

I think that you are mistakenly conflating three things: a) the existence of the messages (and their timings); b) the content of the messages; c) the identity (the actual name) of the person on the other end of the conversation.

It's almost certain that the police knew (a) before the start of Knox's interrogation on the 5th - that information would have been readily available from a request to the network operator.

For (b), the police would almost certainly have had to find the actual messages on either Knox's handset or the handset of the person with whom she had had the exchange. It seems that they definitely found the content of Knox's final reply (the "see you later" text) from looking at Knox's phone. Regarding the incoming message, it's unclear as to whether they 1) found that message on Knox's phone, 2) only knew its content via Knox telling them the jist of the message, or 3) found the message at a later date on Lumumba's handset. Clearly, the current evidence is making things lean more strongly towards (1).

But for (c), I believe that the police would have been entirely in the dark. All they would have known would have been the mobile number of the handset with which Knox had conducted the text exchange. I believe there is no way in which they could have linked the number to a physical identity - i.e. the actual name of the person who owned/used that handset. It's my belief that the only ways in which the police could have learned the identity of that person were to either a) hope Knox would tell them, or b) call/text that number themselves, and hope that they could get the owner to identify himself/herself.

As a comparator regarding the anonymity of pay-as-you-go (PAYG) SIM cards, one need only look at the criminal trial currently underway in the UK regarding phone hacking by UK newspapers. It's already come out in evidence that the reporters who were doing the industrial-scale hacking were deliberately using a "fleet" of PAYG phones/SIMs to do so, in the safe knowledge that such phones/SIMs were totally untraceable to a particular person. They also, of course, made sure that they only ever used these phones in densely-populated areas that were nowhere near their offices or homes, to avoid any location-tracking problems. By all accounts, these phones were all thrown off a bridge into the Thames at some point when the heat started coming down. The police apparently dredged the river to try to find some or all of them, without success.

The plain fact is that you or I could walk into a supermarket or corner shop this evening and buy a pre-paid PAYG SIM card over the counter with cash. There would be no requirement to fill out any registration, and there would in fact be nothing whatsoever linking my or your identity to the mobile number we had just obtained. That's precisely why they are so beloved of drug dealers, would-be terrorists, other organised criminals....... and journalists who want to hack into celebrities' voicemails without fear of their identity being discovered.

 

[LondonJohn]

If Amanda had done as you, there is a 6 in 14 chance that she had been through the periodic purge and deleted the excess incomming texts. There is also the chance that Amanda is not like you and deletes each incomming text after reading them and starts the reply from the address book.

Yes - both of these are very real possibilities.

But my point was that it's also an entirely reasonable possibility (in my view) that Knox treated her text messages in a similar way to mine (when using those sorts of handsets), and that therefore it was entirely possible that she still might have Lumumba's incoming message sitting in her inbox (since she had replied to it immediately, thereby denying herself the chance of also deleting it quickly and easily), despite her general rule to delete received texts immediately.

 

[katy_did]

I think that you are mistakenly conflating three things: a) the existence of the messages (and their timings); b) the content of the messages; c) the identity (the actual name) of the person on the other end of the conversation.

It's almost certain that the police knew (a) before the start of Knox's interrogation on the 5th - that information would have been readily available from a request to the network operator.

For (b), the police would almost certainly have had to find the actual messages on either Knox's handset or the handset of the person with whom she had had the exchange. It seems that they definitely found the content of Knox's final reply (the "see you later" text) from looking at Knox's phone. Regarding the incoming message, it's unclear as to whether they 1) found that message on Knox's phone, 2) only knew its content via Knox telling them the jist of the message, or 3) found the message at a later date on Lumumba's handset. Clearly, the current evidence is making things lean more strongly towards (1).

But for (c), I believe that the police would have been entirely in the dark. All they would have known would have been the mobile number of the handset with which Knox had conducted the text exchange. I believe there is no way in which they could have linked the number to a physical identity - i.e. the actual name of the person who owned/used that handset. It's my belief that the only ways in which the police could have learned the identity of that person were to either a) hope Knox would tell them, or b) call/text that number themselves, and hope that they could get the owner to identify himself/herself.

As a comparator regarding the anonymity of pay-as-you-go (PAYG) SIM cards, one need only look at the criminal trial currently underway in the UK regarding phone hacking by UK newspapers. It's already come out in evidence that the reporters who were doing the industrial-scale hacking were deliberately using a "fleet" of PAYG phones/SIMs to do so, in the safe knowledge that such phones/SIMs were totally untraceable to a particular person. They also, of course, made sure that they only ever used these phones in densely-populated areas that were nowhere near their offices or homes, to avoid any location-tracking problems. By all accounts, these phones were all thrown off a bridge into the Thames at some point when the heat started coming down. The police apparently dredged the river to try to find some or all of them, without success.

The plain fact is that you or I could walk into a supermarket or corner shop this evening and buy a pre-paid PAYG SIM card over the counter with cash. There would be no requirement to fill out any registration, and there would in fact be nothing whatsoever linking my or your identity to the mobile number we had just obtained. That's precisely why they are so beloved of drug dealers, would-be terrorists, other organised criminals....... and journalists who want to hack into celebrities' voicemails without fear of their identity being discovered.

They may not have been able to trace Patrick's identity solely from the text message, but the content would presumably have confirmed what Amanda was telling them - that he text her to tell her not to come into work. It would then have been easy for them to match the incoming message with the outgoing message to see that they were part of the same conversation to the same person.

On the other hand, if they didn't have the incoming message, they had no way of knowing whether Amanda was telling the truth about it being a message to Patrick. It could have been to anyone. So in that context it makes a little more sense that they weren't 100% sure who the message was to and why they were yelling at Amanda to tell them.

 

[anglolawyer]

Yes. I agree that it's highly likely that the police had Knox's phone records from 1st/2nd November in their possession well before the 5th/6th interrogations.

And therefore - as you and Rose suggest - I believe that the police knew that Knox had received a text at 8.18 and had sent a reply text at 8.42 (timings from memory), and I think that they had therefore pre-formed the opinion that whoever was on the other end of this text exchange might well have something to do with the murder.

HOWEVER..... the important thing is that I don't think the police could have known at that point the identity of the person with whom Knox had this text exchange - and nor can they have known the contents of the texts at that point either. The reason why they couldn't have known the person's identity is that this number was from a PAYG SIM card that was obtainable over-the-counter with no ID required. Neither the mobile operator nor the police can therefore have known who had bought that SIM. Only people with contract accounts ("pay monthly") are known by name to the network operators and service providers.

So I believe that at the moment Knox and Sollecito arrived at the police HQ on 5th November, the police knew of the text exchange, but they didn't know with whom Knox had had the exchange, and they did not know the content of the exchange. I believe that a) once they saw the content - especially the "see you later" remark which they were clearly overeager to misinterpret as "I'll see you when we meet up later this evening" (since they had already, in my opinion, formed the thesis that the other party was involved in the crime) - and b) once Knox had informed them of the identity of the person, it became a slam-dunk certainty in their (the police's) minds that their prior theory (that the text sender/recipient was involved) was correct.

Well I know you responded to an over-simplified post of mine but I don't agree they did not know about Patrick at this point. They had other sources of information besides telephone records including, tapped telephone conversations, information from friends and witnesses and tailing. They saw her meet Patrick that very morning and, I believe, deduced the meeting was designed to evade surveillance.

In fact, my personal opinion is that since the police (in my view) thought, by the afternoon of 5th November, that they'd snared Knox on account of this text exchange, they had already come to the firm conclusion that Knox was definitely involved in the murder to some degree. I think that at this point they possibly thought that Sollecito might have been doing no more than lying to protect Knox (a serious crime in itself of course, but not directly related to the murder).

Agreed. The 1.45 confession bears out exactly this theory.

And I think that this is why they originally intended to bring Sollecito in on his own. I think the plan was to get him to break and admit that he was lyhing to protect Knox - that Knox had in fact gone out from his apartment during the crucial hours on the night of the murder. They would then have arrested Sollecito, and would have sent the "lights and sirens" brigade - who appear to have been on standby - to have picked up Knox very visibly and publicly from Sollecito's apartment (or wherever she was - I'd imagine that the plan would have been to have her under surveillance).

Or just called her and asked her to come in too, without alerting her to anything amiss.

I think that once Knox was brought in, she would have been confronted with the fact that Sollecito had admitted he'd lied to protect her. But before that, it was important for the police to ascertain the identity of the person in the text exchange and the content of the texts. So that's why they needed to do this first, before they really started turning the screw - they didn't want Knox to clam up and refuse to tell them the identity of the person if she had already been pushed into a corner.

As stated, I suggest they already knew about Lumumba.

Of course, in the event, Knox accompanied Sollecito to the station. I believe that this only mattered to the police in that it prevented them from the "glory" of the public arrest of Knox. But with that disappointment in hand, the police nevertheless set about carrying out their plan as described above.

The glory factor is certainly worthy of consideration given their ridiculous, puffed up behaviour, but even so ...

And in their minds, it all went almost-perfectly. OK, so Sollecito had to be cajoled and bullied into admitting that it was at least possible that Knox might have left his apartment that night. So, not the full "I was lying, she left for two hours that night; I was trying to protect her" mea culpa they were hoping for. But no matter. They could work with what they had.

So, next in, Knox. And first off, identify the person in the text exchange, and the content of the messages. And..... BINGO! The person was Lumumba, and (with a confirmation bias/tunnel vision hat firmly on) the contents of the messages - particularly Knox's last message to Lumumba - was electrifying to the police! "See you later"!!!! How much more obvious could it have been?!

Caso chiuso...........

I agree this message blotted everything else out until someone had a think in the wee small hours. Two thinks, actually - one to blot out the annoyingly incongruous text and the other to move Raffaele into the frame.

 

[Diocletus]

And take Stefanoni in comparison to Vecchiotti.

OK. Vecciohtti is a real, honest-to-God, PhD "Doctor." Stefanoni is just a phony old Italian-style doctor.

 

[Diocletus]

May I see the warrant? They did not run this deletion point before Matteini. That would have been risky as either Amanda or Patrick might have piped up to object that they had not deleted anything.

Here are the relevant portions:

Furthermore, by the data relative to the cell phone traffic of the number 3484673590, in use by KNOX, emerges a void of traffic from 8:35PM of the 1st of November to 12:00PM of the 2nd of November. There is an analogous void of cell phone traffic from 8:42PM of November 1st to 6:02AM of November 2nd found in the traffic for the number 3403574303 in use by SOLLECITO Raffaele. A text message was found to have been sent at 8:35PM of November 1st by KNOX's number 3484673590 to 3387195723, that of her co-defendant Patrick, in which she wrote "Ci vediamo dopo" ["See you later" or lit: "We'll see each other after"] thus confirming that in the following hours KNOX would find herself with Patrick in the apartment where the victim was.
KNOX, in the deposition of this date, finally confessed to the criminal action perpetrated against Kercher; the defendant, in fact, testified as having met with Patrick, as was communicated in the message found in the memory of her cell phone operating in Perugia, the message of 8:35PM, responding to a message from DIYA arrived at 8:18PM, identified thanks to the analysis of the cell phone traffic relative to the number in use by KNOX.

This last message was not present in the memory of the cell phone.

 

[anglolawyer]

Here are the relevant portions:

Thanks. That's helpful.

 

[anglolawyer]

They may not have been able to trace Patrick's identity solely from the text message, but the content would presumably have confirmed what Amanda was telling them - that he text her to tell her not to come into work. It would then have been easy for them to match the incoming message with the outgoing message to see that they were part of the same conversation to the same person.

On the other hand, if they didn't have the incoming message, they had no way of knowing whether Amanda was telling the truth about it being a message to Patrick. It could have been to anyone. So in that context it makes a little more sense that they weren't 100% sure who the message was to and why they were yelling at Amanda to tell them.

Massei was curious about that:



And before anyone says 'gotcha' I am aware of this testimony and I still say the cops deleted that message.

 

[katy_did]

Remember the problem of conflation and the further problem that, by the 9th, she had been through the Matteini hearing and heard the claim that she had deleted Patrick's message. We know she was confused, don't we? After all, she spent some time trying to unscramble what had been put to her about murdering Meredith. She doubted the verity of her statements. She was in a highly suggestible state.

Seems like you want her to be unreliable on everything except the couple of occasions when she said "the message I was sent" instead of "the message I sent", even when those don't really make sense in context (e.g. that the police were calling her a liar while brandishing Patrick's message about not coming into work).

Her letter to her lawyer makes no sense the way I read it. I can imagine scenarios that work better but they are purely speculative. The cops might have spends some time putting it to her that she was covering for somebody, then asked her for her phone and then showed her Patrick's message, for example. This is the conflation problem. She has several times tried to describe something that went on for hours, not just a couple of minutes.

But everything you're saying is purely speculative.

I don't see how the letter makes no sense. The police were trying to get her to say what she did between 7 and 8, between 8 and 9, between 9 and 10, probably because Raffaele had said she might have left the house. They get onto the topic of Patrick's text telling her she didn't need to work, which they then look for in her phone but can't find it (suspicious!), instead finding a text apparently planning a meeting with someone even though she said she didn't go out. From that point they pressure her to reveal who she's protecting by lying. Seems straightforward to me and it matches Amanda's own account.

True and I will factor it in to my thinking. Thank you. I still do not regard it as determinative because, on the 9th, her recollection was infected by the Matteini hearing. I have quoted what she said the very next day when speaking with her mother.

That is because you are collapsing the time. If they knew about this exchange already, having monitored the phones, then when they brought her in to the room they likely planned to pout her under pressure to admit she met Patrick and became more and more suspicious when his name did not pop out. They knew she had texted with him and interpreted her lapsed memory as something it wasn't. She was sure she had not met anybody but when they showed her the message (and it may not even have been the text of the message, just Patrick's name) that's when she says she broke down and 'saw Patrick'.

Again, this is speculative and doesn't match Amanda's account. Even if they knew about the exchange of texts, I don't see why they would've hung an entire theory on that exchange without even knowing who the messages were to or their content. It's just as likely the messages were irrelevant and Raffaele was the one she was covering for.

I He is a direct, first-hand, professionally trained and/or qualified source for what was said at the press conference. That's all I rely on him for.

Not reliable enough for me, especially as an isolated source. I hear Curatolo and Quintavalle were absolutely certain they were right as well.

I am arguing that De Felice blurted out something stupid. Just as stupid as his remark that they told us what we already knew to be true (uh-oh, they weren't suspects yet Arturo). You assume that, in the short time available, every body was on message. That is not a self-evidently correct assumption.

So you agree that it makes no sense at all that he would say that. We also know that even if this report is true, half of the statement is a lie - Patrick's message didn't arrange a meeting with Amanda. So why assume the other half had to be true? My guess, however, is that it was just misreported. It could even be that De Felice himself got it wrong.

No, they deleted it because it was inconvenient. It did not make sense. They knew there was a meeting alright but they wanted a neat case to take before Matteini. That hearing was the primary goal. De Felice's statement (about the text messages) was an error and one that no one picked up on for years. Not until I did, actually. That's how you work these things out, Katy. People make mistakes. If they don't then they get away with it.

So here's a question. Suppose you're right, and they did have Lumumba's text. In that case they would've know Amanda was telling the truth about him texting her to tell her not to come into work because it was too quiet, and that they hadn't set up some secret meeting. Why then did they pressure Amanda about that text in the first place?

Let's say you're wrong about the text. In this scenario they have a message from Amanda apparently arranging a meeting with someone that evening - contradicting her claim she didn't go out - and the other half of the conversation has been suspiciously deleted. Wouldn't it then make a lot of sense that they pressured her to reveal who the message was sent to and who she met up with?

 

[Diocletus]

Thanks. That's helpful.

The things that strike me are:

1. The lie by omission about the true content of the ce viadomo (or whatever) message. If they lied about this, they could have lied about other things, e.g., deleting the text to make the fact of a meeting seem more believable.

2. The fact that at the time this warrant was signed (November 6 at 8:40 am), Knox's cell phone records were in hand, which would seem to mean that the cell phone records were collected on a prior day.

 

[katy_did]

They had other sources of information besides telephone records including, tapped telephone conversations, information from friends and witnesses and tailing. They saw her meet Patrick that very morning and, I believe, deduced the meeting was designed to evade surveillance.

Is there evidence she was being tailed? They spoke in court about the phones being tapped, most likely not just Amanda's but presumably all the people surrounding Meredith (the other people who lived in the upstairs and downstairs flats and the British friends, at a minimum). Was anything said about them being followed?

 

[Grinder]

Incidentally, he speaks in French, the official language of Congo. More reason to believe he never gave that interview to Lady Antonia Whatsername.

Don't see any connection. I see no reason at all not to believe the story as she wrote it up.

Clearly the BBC 3 programme presented the prosecution’s case, given the producers I doubt that was a surprise to any of the regular posters at JREF. I think there will be the predictable reactions from PIP and PGP perspective but this programme like the Ch 5 programme will not have an impact on the remaining process in Italy, it is a shame that there are no translations or subtitles available for some of the TV programme’s in Italy that have covered the case.

You had made a statement about the Ch. 5 story being at the time of the trial as if that made it more significant in influencing the trial. I asked you what was wrong with their show. If they did an honest job, for example showing the climb, why would that be an unfair influence?

 

[LondonJohn]

Is there evidence she was being tailed? They spoke in court about the phones being tapped, most likely not just Amanda's but presumably all the people surrounding Meredith (the other people who lived in the upstairs and downstairs flats and the British friends, at a minimum). Was anything said about them being followed?

Well, I believe it's an established fact that the police witnessed Knox having a short conversation with Lumumba outside the University for Foreigners on the morning of the 5th.

And if that's the case, then either the police somehow "stumbled" across the meeting (but if so, how? Murder squad detective having a quiet coffee in the square just happens to see Knox and watches her as she converses with Lumumba?), or the police indeed had Knox under some sort of visual surveillance.

 

[katy_did]

Well, I believe it's an established fact that the police witnessed Knox having a short conversation with Lumumba outside the University for Foreigners on the morning of the 5th.

And if that's the case, then either the police somehow "stumbled" across the meeting (but if so, how? Murder squad detective having a quiet coffee in the square just happens to see Knox and watches her as she converses with Lumumba?), or the police indeed had Knox under some sort of visual surveillance.

But how is that an established fact? I know it's mentioned in Amanda's second statement, but that could easily have been in response to a question from the investigators, "When did you last see Patrick?" for example.

 

[anglolawyer]

Seems like you want her to be unreliable on everything except the couple of occasions when she said "the message I was sent" instead of "the message I sent", even when those don't really make sense in context (e.g. that the police were calling her a liar while brandishing Patrick's message about not coming into work).

I am happy with her being unreliable on all counts, actually. Guede is unreliable too but that should not prevent one from discerning some facts from what he chose to say.

But everything you're saying is purely speculative.

Most of what both of us are saying is speculative. We don't have the phone to examine, after all.

I don't see how the letter makes no sense. The police were trying to get her to say what she did between 7 and 8, between 8 and 9, between 9 and 10, probably because Raffaele had said she might have left the house. They get onto the topic of Patrick's text telling her she didn't need to work, which they then look for in her phone but can't find it (suspicious!), instead finding a text apparently planning a meeting with someone even though she said she didn't go out. From that point they pressure her to reveal who she's protecting by lying. Seems straightforward to me and it matches Amanda's own account.

I understand you but disagree. They were talking (you say) specifically about Patrick's missing message saying 'don't come to work' and they wanted to know whether she replied to Patrick obviously. She could not remember doing so then they showed her she had replied to Patrick. That being so, why would they go on to accuse her of protecting somebody and ask her who it was? Read the quote again:

We talked about the message I received from Patrik [and] I told them yes, I received a message from Patrik, he told me [not] to go into work that night because there was no one there. I [did]n't remember if I had sent a message back, so I said no, but they [had] taken my phone and showed me the message I forgot I sent: [ending?] with the words, "Ci vediamo. Buona serata." They called me a [stu]pid lier. They said I was protecting someone, who was it?!

It cannot have happened this way.

Again, this is speculative and doesn't match Amanda's account. Even if they knew about the exchange of texts, I don't see why they would've hung an entire theory on that exchange without even knowing who the messages were to or their content. It's just as likely the messages were irrelevant and Raffaele was the one she was covering for.

I agree it's speculative but this does not fairly characterise my position. It was not just an exchange of texts. Off the top of my head, their theory was made up of the following:

1. an exchange of texts
2. Patrick's phone pinged near the apartment
3. A black guy did it
4. A black guy who was known to Meredith or Amanda
5. Patrick was such a black guy
6. The burglary was fake
7. Patrick called Amanda the night of the 2nd at the questura (to find out what the cops knew)
8. Patrick did not call after that (to avoid surveillance)
9. She did not go back to work (to avoid being seen together)
10. They met face to face on the 5th (to avoid surveillance)
11. She never dropped Patrick into the conversation during any of her 54 hours of questioning (or whatever it was)
12. pizza, behaviour, underwear etc etc

Not reliable enough for me, especially as an isolated source. I hear Curatolo and Quintavalle were absolutely certain they were right as well.

No comparison. Those two are simply liars. There is no reason why Malcolm Moore would lie. Nobody at the press conference had any idea of the significance of these texts. He would not last long in journalism with a reputable national paper if he were that unreliable.

So you agree that it makes no sense at all that he would say that. We also know that even if this report is true, half of the statement is a lie - Patrick's message didn't arrange a meeting with Amanda. So why assume the other half had to be true? My guess, however, is that it was just misreported. It could even be that De Felice himself got it wrong.

Yes, you've said all that already.

So here's a question. Suppose you're right, and they did have Lumumba's text. In that case they would've know Amanda was telling the truth about him texting her to tell her not to come into work because it was too quiet, and that they hadn't set up some secret meeting. Why then did they pressure Amanda about that text in the first place?

Because of confirmation bias. They had a pre-formed theory that drove them to a certain conviction that she was involved. All else was peripheral. They turned their attention from the 'buona serata' part, didn't they - and we both agree they had that, right? Did they pass that on to Matteini? Was it in her 1.45 confession, or the later one? Go ahead and take over. You explain why not.

Let's say you're wrong about the text. In this scenario they have a message from Amanda apparently arranging a meeting with someone that evening - contradicting her claim she didn't go out - and the other half of the conversation has been suspiciously deleted. Wouldn't it then make a lot of sense that they pressured her to reveal who the message was sent to and who she met up with?

Sure, if they didn't already know but, as I have said, I believe they did. Pure speculation, of course.

 

[LondonJohn]

Well I know you responded to an over-simplified post of mine but I don't agree they did not know about Patrick at this point. They had other sources of information besides telephone records including, tapped telephone conversations, information from friends and witnesses and tailing. They saw her meet Patrick that very morning and, I believe, deduced the meeting was designed to evade surveillance.

Well, it's possible that Knox spoke with Lumumba via her mobile while her phone was being tapped (i.e. at some point from around 3rd November to 5th November), and the police were able to use that to match Lumumba's name to his mobile number (e.g. they overheard a call from this particular number to Knox's mobile, and hear Knox say "Hi Patrick" and perhaps discuss the bar job).

Other than that, though, I don't think there was any way they could have known that it was Lumumba with whom Knox had had that text exchange on the night of the murder. I can't think of any other mechanism - other than asking Knox - whereby the police could reliably have divined the identity of the person who used that mobile number.

I think that when Knox told them - early on in her 5th/6th November interrogation - that this number belonged to Lumumba, they employed further ex-post facto reasoning and confirmation bias to link in the meeting that they'd seen Knox and Lumumba having earlier that day, e.g: "Ahh, so now that meeting we saw them having makes sense! They must have been checking that each other was not giving anything away, and inquiring as to the amount of police interest each of them had received."

 

[Grinder]

.
That's because you buy into the far-fetched Mafia code theory. Why would they be expecting their messages to be read at some future time when texting between 8 and 9 p.m. on 1st Nov? Why not just text and delete? They had 5 days to do it.

Mafia style, style not code .

I think you've done a great job on making this text issue. I'm trying to get into the PLE's shoes during that period. We have the Italian penchant* for thinking everything has double meanings and nothing is as it appears. It is obvious to me that they came to believe that Amanda and Patrick had made plans in advance for her aiding him in setting up or facilitating his desires for sex with Meredith.

Why didn't they just text and delete? Well Amanda claimed that she did delete all incoming messages and wasn't aware that outgoing messages were saved. But why worry at all? Why didn't Patrick just say let's meet in 15 minutes and you take me to the cottage?

Perhaps, as most of us here, they didn't know if the messages would be on the providers servers. We have gone over this many a time and it is clear that SMS can be retained. I would say that if someone was intending to commit some bad deed they would code their message using mafia style.

ETA -* Dietrology -It is, therefore, the study or analysis of the perceptually invisible, of what lies behind language, events, actions, processes, and behaviours.

 

[Diocletus]

The SMS is the only objective evidence used to justify the arrest. It is virtually the only corroboration of the results of the interrogation.

The SMS would make no sense as proof of a Knox-Lumumba meet-up if:

1) It said "good night" or

2) It's context (no need for you to come to work) was known.

Therefore, the first point was dishonestly omitted from the arrest warrant. The second point could have been, too.

If the full SMS meaning and context was known, it would not have corroborated the interrogation. Obviously, that would be suspect, but I also wonder whether there are restrictions under Italian law on the use of the uncorroborated results of a lawyerless interrogation as cause for arrest.

 

[anglolawyer]

Is there evidence she was being tailed? They spoke in court about the phones being tapped, most likely not just Amanda's but presumably all the people surrounding Meredith (the other people who lived in the upstairs and downstairs flats and the British friends, at a minimum). Was anything said about them being followed?

I don't know. I assume that, as she was almost certainly their main suspect from the word go that it would have been sensible to put a tail on her, don't you? And yes, yes I know it's speculation. The question is whether it is reasonable speculation. What evidence would you expect there to be of something the cops were desperate to conceal since they had broken the law?

We could dismiss all speculation I suppose and say that, in the absence of concrete evidence (including, in particular, all news reports to be discounted unless corroborated) we are only entitled to conclude that neither Amanda nor Raffaele were in the least suspected when they went to the quester the night of the 5th, the cops had nothing special in mind, all those extra guys were there by coincidence, no tapes were running (why bother) and it was just a random throw of the dice that prompted them, for no reason, to start questioning whether Raffaele could vouch for her whereabouts on the 1st, removing his shoes in the process for some strange and unknowable reason that must remain in the realm of speculation.

 

[Desert Fox]

It should never happen. But international diplomacy is neither logical nor humane. If Italy chooses to make it an issue that affects treaty obligations, trade etc., the U.S. could choose to sacrifice Amanda. The U.S. has seven military bases in Italy. Suppose the Italian government started restricting service members to their bases, or squeezing them in other ways? Suppose Italy imposes conditions on U.S. companies doing business in Italy? It would be easy for the U.S. to say "This is a matter between Italy and a private party. The U.S. government has no role here."

I think that would actually economically hurt the areas around the base more than the soldiers.