Category Archives: Italy

Italians investigate blindfolding of teenage US murder suspect

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Photograph of Gabriel Hjorth, 18, at police barracks compared to Guantánamo Bay images

Italian police have opened an investigation after photographs emerged showing an American teenager blindfolded and handcuffed shortly after he was arrested on suspicion of killing an officer.

A photo of 18-year-old Gabriel Christian Natale Hjorth, with his head bowed and hands cuffed behind his back, was shown in the Italian press on Sunday, with Corriere della Sera comparing it to images of prisoners at the US military facility Guantánamo Bay.

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US students accused of stabbing Rome police officer appear in court

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Mario Cerciello Rega died after being repeatedly stabbed early on Friday in a crime that has shaken Italy

Two American students have appeared in court in Rome accused of stabbing a plain-clothes police officer to death on a street near their hotel.

Gabriel Christian Natale Hjorth, 18, and Finnegan Lee Elder, 19, from San Francisco, appeared in court in connection with the death of Carabinieri paramilitary police officer Mario Cerciello Rega, 35. The dead man, and a fellow officer, were in plain clothes when they confronted the two Americans in the wake of a drug deal gone wrong, the court heard.

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Mussolini’s birthplace cashes in on the surge of far-right tourism

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Thousands of curious visitors – and fascists – descend on the Apennine town

Dressed in black T-shirts, their arms inked with tattoos, Fabrizio and Mameli Gamberini are on their yearly homage trip to Predappio, the birth town and burial place of Benito Mussolini.

“We’re fascists,” Mameli proudly admits as she leaves Predappio Tricolore, a souvenir shop teeming with Mussolini memorabilia, on Friday morning. “We come every year at the end of July to buy a few new keepsakes, visit his tomb and leave some flowers in his honour.”

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South Korea: world championship athletes injured in fatal balcony collapse

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Two South Koreans killed and athletes from US, New Zealand, Netherlands, Italy and Brazil injured

Two South Koreans have died and several others, including athletes attending the world aquatic championships, have been injured after a structure collapsed in a nightclub in the city of Gwangju early on Saturday, a fire department official has said.

The deaths happened when a two-level structure in the club, which is next to the athletes’ village, collapsed at about 2am local time, hitting and pinning revellers, the official said.

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Matteo Salvini avoids questions over alleged League links to Russian money

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Absent from parliament, Italy’s deputy PM says his party did not ask for or take money

Italy’s deputy prime minister Matteo Salvini has avoided an interrogation in parliament over claims his far-right League party sought money from Russia.

In Salvini’s absence, the allegations were addressed by the prime minister, Giuseppe Conte, who said no evidence had emerged to diminish the trust he had “in all members of the government”.

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‘We had a row, she left. It was the last time I saw her’: anguish of Emanuela Orlandi’s brother

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Brother tells of his family’s pain as 36-year investigation into missing Vatican teenager takes another bizarre twist

A missing teenager, an empty tomb, a swirl of dark theories, and the closed doors and habitual secrecy of the Vatican. It sounds like fiction, but it is a real-life mystery that has gripped Italy for more than three decades and has embroiled the powerful and inscrutable Holy See.

For 36 years, the family of Emanuela Orlandi has sought answers about the fate of the 15-year-old girl who vanished from the streets of Rome on her way to a flute lesson.

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Hanging about: Italian city demands right to nap in a hammock

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Residents of Trieste angry after Austrian tourist fined €300 for sleeping near seafront

Citizens of Trieste are planning a protest on Saturday to claim their “right to nap in a hammock” in the northern Italian city’s popular seafront pine forest area, Barcola, after an Austrian tourist was fined €300 for sleeping in one.

The man, 52, hung a hammock between two trees along the promenade that runs between the forest and seafront on Thursday afternoon. But his slumber was interrupted by police following complaints from passersby.

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Police arrest 21 suspected mafia members in Canada and Italy

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Police raided 48 cafes, businesses and residences connected to the ’Ndrangheta group, seizing C$35m in assets, including five Ferraris

Canadian police have arrested nine suspected members of the the Calabrian organised crime group ’Ndrangheta, who are accused of money laundering and illegal gambling in the Toronto area.

Over three days, police raided 48 cafes, businesses and residences connected to the group, seizing C$35m ($26.8m) in assets, including five Ferraris.

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FBI and Italian police arrest 19 people in Sicily and US in mafia investigation

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Prosecutors allege Inzerillo clan was seeking to rebuild power base in Palermo with help from allied New York-based Gambino family

Italian and US police have launched a coordinated crackdown on a Sicilian mafia family that was seeking to rebuild its power base after years of exile in the United States, Italian investigators said on Wednesday.

More than 200 police, including officers from the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), arrested 18 people in Sicily as part of their investigation into the Inzerillo clan in the island’s capital Palermo and the allied New York-based Gambino family.

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Vatican hunt for Emanuela Orlandi uncovers two sets of bones

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Papal authorities seal off area inside Pontifical Teutonic College in search for girl missing since 1983

One of Rome’s most enduring mysteries – the 1983 disappearance of 15-year-old Emanuela Orlandi, a Vatican employee’s daughter – took a new twist on Saturday when papal authorities announced that they had discovered two sets of bones under a stone manhole.

On Thursday the Vatican had pried open the tombs of two 19th-century German princesses in the cemetery of the Pontifical Teutonic College after Emanuela’s family had received a tip that her remains might be buried there. But the tombs turned out to be completely empty, creating yet another mystery over the whereabouts of the dead princesses.

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UK agencies played key role in Italian mistaken identity case

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Medhanie Tesfamariam Berhe wrongly arrested based on tipoffs from NCA and GCHQ

The acquittal of Medhanie Tesfamariam Berhe by an Italian court of being a human trafficking kingpin is a major embarrassment for Britain’s National Crime Agency and the GCHQ intelligence service.

Berhe’s arrest in 2016 was trumpeted as a major coup in the battle against international people-smuggling, but unbeknown to them at the time, the Italian and British authorities had mistaken the Eritrean for one of the world’s most-wanted human traffickers, Medhanie Yehdego Mered, aka the General.

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Eritrean man released from jail in Italian mistaken identity case

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Judge acquits Medhanie Tesfamariam Berhe of being a human trafficking kingpin

A Palermo judge has acquitted an Eritrean man of being a human trafficking kingpin, confirming he was the victim of mistaken identity when he was arrested more than three years ago in a joint operation between Italian and British authorities.

The arrest of Medhanie Tesfamariam Berhe in 2016 was presented to the press as a brilliant coup by Italian and British authorities, who mistook him for one of the world’s most-wanted human traffickers, Medhanie Yehdego Mered, aka the General.

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Battle with time: Italian towns face demise by depopulation

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Small Sicilian villages reflect the shifting demographics of economic migration and declining birth rates

The birth of a baby in the small town of Acquaviva Platani, in inland Sicily, is such a rare event that the village bells toll to celebrate the arrival.

With just 800 inhabitants Acquaviva is among thousands of Italian towns risking extinction in the coming decades, as the country faces an unprecedented crisis of population decline.

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Italian prosecutors investigate League over alleged Russian oil deal claims

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Inquiry to examine corruption claims over alleged plan to channel Russian oil funds to Salvini party

Italian prosecutors have begun an investigation after claims saying Matteo Salvini’s far-right party, the League, sought funds via a Russian oil deal.

Prosecutors in Milan have opened an inquiry into possible charges of international corruption in the case. The inquiry follows an investigation by L’Espresso magazine (reported by the Guardian in February) which alleged there was an arrangement by Russian representatives, close to Vladmir Putin’s government, to sell 3m tons of diesel fuel to an Italian oil company.

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One of Italy’s top drug dealers arrested in Brazil after five years on the run

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Nicola Assisi, member of the organized crime group ’Ndrangheta was arrested with his son and await extradition to Italy

After five years on the run, one of Italy’s top cocaine dealers has been arrested in São Paulo along with his son.

Nicola Assisi, 61, a member of the Calabrian organised crime group ’Ndrangheta was arrested on Monday by Brazilian federal police, with his son Patrick, 36, who is also accused of drug trafficking.

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Italian court jails 24 over South American Operation Condor

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Dictatorships of six countries conspired to kidnap and kill political opponents in 1970s

An Italian court has sentenced 24 people to life in prison for their involvement in Operation Condor, in which the dictatorships of six South American countries conspired to kidnap and assassinate political opponents in each other’s territories.

Related: How an Argentinian man learned his 'father' may have killed his real parents

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Rescued refugees land in Sicily as another ship defies Salvini

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Charity vessel carrying 41 docks in Lampedusa after two days stranded at sea

Forty-one refugees and migrants disembarked overnight at the port of Lampedusa after a charity vessel that rescued them off Libya defied an attempt by Italy’s far-right interior minister, Matteo Salvini, to close ports to NGO boats.

The Italian-flagged Alex, run by the NGO Mediterranea, was escorted by the Italian coastguard and on Saturday the ship was seized by police, the captain was put under investigation for allegedly aiding illegal immigration, and the rescuees eventually disembarked. Mediterranea was fined €16.000 (£14,300).

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Second migrant rescue boat defies Salvini and docks in Italy

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Mediterranea’s Italian-flagged Alex arrives in Lampedusa with 41 shipwrecked migrants

A charity rescue vessel brought 41 shipwrecked migrants into port in Lampedusa on Saturday, the second boat to defy far-right interior minister Matteo Salvini’s bid to close Italian ports to them.

Mediterranea’s Italian-flagged Alex arrived in port where a strong police presence was waiting for them but everyone remained on board after spending two days with the rescued migrants and asylum-seekers on the sailboat.

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Tigers kill Italian tamer as parliament mulls ban on circus animals

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All eight of the circus’s tigers were impounded by police after tamer Ettore Weber was mauled to death

Four tigers have mauled to death their tamer in southern Italy, fuelling calls for a ban on the use of animals in circuses as parliament debates the issue.

Police said the 61-year-old tamer, Ettore Weber, was attacked by the tigers on Thursday during a training session in Triggiano, a small town in the Puglia region.

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Captain who rescued 42 migrants: I’d do it again despite jail threat

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Carola Rackete faces prospect of long trial for defying Italy’s ban on rescue ships

The ship’s captain facing jail after defying Italian law to bring 42 migrants into port has said she would do it all over again and hit out at Italy’s far-right deputy prime minister, Matteo Salvini.

“People’s lives matter more than any political game,” Carola Rackete, the German captain of the migrant NGO rescue ship Sea-Watch 3, told the Guardian.

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