-
- Senior Member+
- Posts: 33606
- Joined: 30 Jul 2010, 20:43
-
- Member+
- Posts: 9527
- Joined: 23 Jul 2015, 06:10
-
- Member+
- Posts: 5507
- Joined: 14 Feb 2020, 04:27
-
- Senior Member+
- Posts: 33606
- Joined: 30 Jul 2010, 20:43
Re: Another Isaias intrigue, exposed!
The Eritrean priest Mussie Zerai
Italy
Italian prosecutors secretly recorded human rights lawyers
Exclusive: hundreds of conversations with clients were wiretapped in cases relating to migrant rescue boats
Lorenzo Tondo in Palermo: @lorenzo_tondo
https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2021/ ... ssion=true
Fri 9 Apr 2021
Prosecutors in Italy https://www.theguardian.com/world/italy have secretly recorded hundreds of conversations between human rights lawyers and their clients in cases related to allegations that NGOs operating rescue boats that saved thousands from drowning in the Mediterranean were complicit in people smuggling.
In a joint investigation with the Italian public broadcaster Rai News and the newspaper Domani, the Guardian has seen documents from prosecutors in Trapani, Sicily, detailing private conversations between human rights lawyers and their clients, including a priest, and with journalists in which confidential information was discussed regarding ongoing trials, private sources and legal defence strategies in upcoming hearings.
Rescuers from charities including Save the Children and Médecins Sans Frontières were last month charged by the Trapani prosecutors after a four-year investigation into claims of complicity with people smugglers in Libya, which in 2017 had led to the seizure of the Iuventa, https://www.theguardian.com/news/2020/s ... vini-italy a former fishing vessel run by the German NGO Jugend Rettet (Youth Rescue).
The investigation was heavily criticised by human rights groups but welcomed by Italy’s far-right populists, who raged against NGO rescue boats as “sea taxis”.
The most serious case appears to be that of Father Mussie Zerai, an Eritrean priest in Rome who runs the refugee rights organisation Habeshia and was in November 2016 officially placed under investigation by prosecutors in Trapani for abetting illegal immigration.
Zerai, a Nobel peace prize candidate in 2015, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/ ... 2015-award was acquitted of the charges, but during the investigation dozens of conversations with his lawyer discussing the case were recorded. Italian law forbids the interception of conversations under investigation and their lawyers, whose relationship is governed by attorney-client privilege.
The 30,000-page file seen by the Guardian reveals Zerai was recorded in August 2017 asking his lawyer to arrange a meeting with the lead prosecutor in Trapani to explain his innocence and saying he believed some media were attempting to discredit the work of NGOs in the Mediterranean. He was also recorded asking a senator, Luigi Marconi, for assistance in helping hundreds of Eritreans evicted from a building in Rome.
Zerai said.If I was wiretapped while talking to my lawyer, it means I was also wiretapped talking with bishops, cardinals, employees of the Holy See and ambassadors,
Where is the rule of law here? And this took place while people continued to drown in the sea.
Rescuers from Save the Children transfer migrants from the Iuventa to their own ship during an operation off the Libyan coast in September 2016. Photograph: Reuters/Alamy
The Italian justice ministry this week announced it was to
into the Trapani prosecutors following reports that journalists covering migration in the Mediterranean had been recorded in conversation https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/ ... ing-sicily with rescuers and confidential sources.urgently carry out the necessary preliminary investigations
Journalist groups described the move as one of the most serious attacks on the press in Italian history.
One of those journalists, Nancy Porsia, was recorded in conversation with her lawyer, Alessandra Ballerini, who also acts for the family of the Cambridge PhD student Giulio Regeni, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/ ... lio-regeni who was kidnapped and murdered in Cairo in 2016.
Porsia had her telephone bugged for more than five months in 2017 by prosecutors in Trapani. The investigators also tracked her movements using her mobile phone’s geolocation data.
Her conversations with Ballerini that are transcribed in the files seen by the Guardian include the lawyer revealing confidential information about a trip to Cairo in which she feared for her safety, and Porsia telling Ballerini that she was having difficulty securing a visa for Libya due, she believed, to her investigations of the notorious alleged human trafficker and Libyan coastguard commander Abd al-Rahman Milad, https://www.theguardian.com/global-deve ... rafficking known as Bija.
Porsia also expressed her fear of being under investigation after police summoned her to a meeting in Rome, but Ballerini is heard reassuring her, explaining that they would not have summoned her if that was the case. She tells her not to worry because their telephone conversation is covered under client privilege.
Investigators also secretly recorded the journalist’s conversations with two other lawyers, revealing their defence strategies in two other ongoing trials. Michele Calantropo, a lawyer for Medhanie Tesfamariam Berhe, a refugee accused in a case of mistaken identity https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/ ... nd-request of being one of the world’s most sought-after human traffickers, Medhanie Yehdego Mered, was recorded asking Porsia to provide evidence as an expert witness on the dynamics of people smuggling in north Africa.
Documents dated 16 November 2017 show prosecutors recording a phone call between Porsia and the lawyer Serena Romano. At the time, Romano was working in a trial against alleged drivers of migrant boats, in which Porsia was called to appear as an adviser to describe the smuggling of migrants. Investigators in Trapani were listening in on the planned defence strategy between the lawyer and Porsia and filed the transcription.
Calantropo told the Guardian.Those wiretaps had to be stopped,
Trapani’s acting head prosecutor, Maurizio Agnello, said in a statement:They have no relevance in their investigation, not to mention that they are totally outlawed and violate the European convention on human rights.
In anticipation of the conclusion of investigations ordered by the general prosecutor’s office in Palermo and by the inspector general of the ministry of justice, to whom I sent a detailed report on this matter, I believe it is most opportune and responsible for me not to participate in any further discussions in this matter.
-
- Senior Member+
- Posts: 33606
- Joined: 30 Jul 2010, 20:43
-
- Senior Member+
- Posts: 33606
- Joined: 30 Jul 2010, 20:43
Re: Another Isaias intrigue, exposed!
Prince Philip had a long history of racist and problematic language stretching back nearly 40 years
Sarah Al-Arshani
https://www.insider.com/prince-philip-l ... 2021-4?amp
Apr 9, 2021
The Duke of Edinburgh leaves the London Clinic in central London, in 2013 after having exploratory abdominal surgery. Dominic Lipinski/PA Images via Getty Images
• Prince Philip, the longest-serving consort in the British monarchy, died at the age of 99.
• His legacy is muddled by decades of racist, sexist, and degrading comments.
• Philip was married to Queen Elizabeth II for more than 73 years.
Prince Philip, the husband of Queen Elizabeth II, died on Friday and his legacy is muddied by a decades-long history of off-the-cuff problematic and casually racist comments.
Philip, who died at 99, was the longest-serving consort in the history of the British monarchy. https://www.insider.com/prince-philip-dead-2021-3 While he's remembered for his work with charity organizations like the World Wide Fund for Nature, he's repeatedly made offensive statements. https://www.businessinsider.com/prince- ... l-eat-it-6
The Duke, who married the Queen in 1947, retired from public life http://uk.businessinsider.com/the-queen ... ing-2017-5 in May 2017 at the age of 95, but for more than 40 years prior his racist, sexist, or degrading statements were brushed off as "gaffes."
In 1986, while on a visit to China, Philip described Beijing as "ghastly." He also told British students:
That same year, while speaking at a World Wildlife Fund meeting, Philip made an insensitive comment on Cantonese cuisine.If you stay here much longer you'll all be slitty-eyed.
he said.If it has four legs and is not a chair, has wings and is not an airplane, or swims and is not a submarine, the Cantonese will eat it,
In 1988, he told a student who was trekking through Papua New Guinea:
In 1994, he asked residents of the Cayman Islands if most of them wereYou managed not to get eaten then?
and in 2002 he asked an aboriginal leader in Queensland:descended from pirates
Kehinde Andrews, Professor of Black Studies at Birmingham City University, told CNN: https://www.cnn.com/2021/04/09/uk/princ ... index.htmlDo you still throw spears at each other?
Philip also made many sexist remarks.He was a throwback to old-school racism. Painting him as a benign, cuddly uncle of the nation is simply untrue.
he asked a Kenyan woman in 1984 when she gave him a gift.You are a woman, aren't you?
In 1988 he said:
Mashable https://mashable.com/2017/05/04/prince- ... ffes-list/ reported.I don't think a prostitute is more moral than a wife, but they are doing the same thing,
In 2009 he met a female Sea Cadet who told him she worked at a nightclub. Phillip asked her:
Other comments made by the Duke were generally offensive.Is it a strip club?
In 2002, he said
while pointing to a 14-year-old member of a Bangladeshi youth club.So who's on drugs here?... HE looks as if he's on drugs,
He told the president of Nigeria that he looked like he was
because he was dressed in a traditional robe.ready for bed,
Philip also told a 13-year-old who wanted to become an astronaut that he should lose some weight.
His history of offensive comments comes at a time when racial sensitivity and racism in the Royal family is being looked into after Prince Harry and Meghan Markle told Oprah Winfrey that members of the family were concerned over what skin tone her son Archie would have before he was born. https://www.insider.com/meghan-markle-p ... hie-2021-3 Markle never specifically said who made those comments.
In a follow-up appearance, Winfrey told host Gayle King that it was not Queen Elizabeth or Prince Philip https://www.insider.com/queen-skin-megh ... itv-2021-3 who had "concerns" on the topic.
Prince Harry and Markle did pay tribute to Philip https://www.insider.com/prince-harry-me ... ead-2021-4 after his death was announced.
the couple posted on their Archewell website. https://archewell.com/In loving memory of His Royal Highness the Duke of Edinburgh,
Thank you for your service...You will be greatly missed.