Anna Donnino
Worked for Perugia Police for 22 years.
Q: What work do you do?
A: I am the translation/interpretation reviser at the Perugia Police Station.
Q: For how long?
A: For more than 22 years
Doesn’t know when she was called in.
Q: Tell us what happened, when she arrived and what happened, except only, obviously, the declarations, which are not allowed to be reported.
A: I remember having received a telephone call from Assistant Lorena Zugarini, the precise hour exactly I’m not able to say.
Donnino was an interrupter.
Q: You were present as interpreter?
A: Yes, absolutely yes
But then under cross says she is a meditator.
Defence (Bongiorno): Still in cross-examination in the ambit of that night which has been discussed up until now. You have mentioned replying to my colleagues that you had spoken to Amanda about the fact that you have daughters, that you were woken at night etc to create a humane rapport. I ask you the reasons why for which your role was mere interpreter, therefore to translate, it was necessary to create a humane rapport.
A: It was necessary Counsel, yes, because it is a thing that I do habitually and it is a fundamental thing because it also establishes a relationship of trust with the [168] person who one has next to one. I above all am a mediator, so I am not, as you say, a simple executor and a little machine that translates words. Beside me I have a person who however finds herself in the middle of people that do not speak her language, I am her channel and I feel a duty to establish a rapport that goes a little bit beyond the exquisitely technical thing. I do it habitually with everybody, I didn’t do it only that night, I do it all the time.
Q: I ask only what does “I’m a mediator” mean? Your role mustn’t be, at the moment when a formal statement is being done, with questions and answers, a mere translator or you… that is, define mediator better for me.
A: Being a mediator means that however I am able to also, by means of personal conversation. So I also make this my duty and carry them out. Q: So in the ambit of your role in which you were mediator you then considered it worthwhile to recount to Amanda even your personal experience relating to the leg fracture etc.
A: Yes
Ivano from the SCO was in the room when she arrived. He never testified at the trial.
Q: Do you remember how Amanda was? How was her behaviour? Then later we’ll get more into the specifics.
A: I had been made to enter a room where in fact there was Inspector Ficarra at a small table, another colleague from SCO, I only remember his first name, he was called Ivano, a police officer, and there was Miss Knox seated,
Ivano was touching and caressing a young female suspect.
Q: Was there anyone, some police officer who, himself also, was staying there?
A: Yes. I’ll explain Miss Knox was seated at the table, I was on her left and I was translating what she was saying, her questions, her answers, and in front of her there was this… an agent from SCO actually, I remember that he was called Ivano, who through the whole evening had comforted her, had reassured her, I remember perfectly that I was extremely struck by the behaviour of this person, by his humanity [139] and by his patience, he was holding her hands and caressing her exactly because he had noted/realised the particularly prostrate/dejected state of the girl.
Freudian slip?
Q: You remember it… you’ve described it, however I’ll ask it, was she threatened, did she suffer any beatings?
A: Absolutely.
Q: She suffered maltreatments?
A: Absolutely not.
Donnino translated 600 pages of letters but didn’t write down a single question in the interrogation.
Defence (Ghirga): A question about the letters, but you translated these 600 letters, Dr Colantone translated them, you translated them… translated, looked at, made a précis of because first it seemed to be an activity of the prior witness, now it seems to be by your activity. This 600-letter correspondence, it’s not a fundamental question, did you do it together, dividing the work?
A: There are four of us interpreters at the Station and all of us worked, we all collaborated regarding this case and generally we team-work in the sense that we distribute the work, we check on the proceedings, so all of us know everything and also regarding these letters an analogous thing was done.
Q: If I show you Amanda’s 1:45 summary informations from the 6th, but I say to you there aren’t any questions, and I ask you: how come not one question was statemented on the part of… not even the acronym ADR [“replies as follows”], nothing?
A: This I don’t…
Q: You’ve said that there were questions, you translated them, there’s not even one.
A: If there aren’t… [165] President: Counsel is asking how come none of the questions were reported and not even the ADR? A: I don’t know about this.
Donnino never left Amanda’s side except at 7.30am after typing up the spontaneous statement.
Q: Then what happened? Up until what time did you [142] remain there?
A: I remained there definitely until eight in the morning because I had expected, I had waited for my colleague to change shifts, I had absented myself though a couple of times after the typing up of the spontaneous declarations statement because I had gone to the ground floor to get a coffee and then to the bar, when it had opened, it would have been around half past seven.
She didn’t leave until 8am and had to wait for a colleague, Colantone, to replace her.
Q: And when you left the Station in the morning at 6?
A: I left at eight, I waited for my colleague Colantone to arrive. President: On this… only on the questions that were [172] put. I wanted to ask is there a time-recorder at the Station?
A: Yes, yes.
Q: But you inserted the time-recorder?
A: No, there’s an out-of-hours pass.
Q: And you inserted it?
A: Yes, yes.
Q: And then around eight…
A: I had left, yes.
Q: You were finished for the day?
A: Yes.
Q: And Colantone took over?
A: Yes, precisely my colleague Colantone.
