AFP - The corruption trial against Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi will take place on November 27, judicial sources said Saturday, after a high court this month stripped him of his immunity. The trial was suspended last year after Italy's parliament passed legislation giving the premier immunity, but the Constitutional Court struck down the law on October 7, paving the way for legal cases against Berlusconi to resume. Berlusconi is accused of paying his British former tax lawyer, David Mills, 600,000 dollars (400,000 euros) to give false evidence in two trials in the 1990s.
AFP - The corruption trial against Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi will take place on November 27, judicial sources said Saturday, after a high court this month stripped him of his immunity.
The trial was suspended last year after Italy's parliament passed legislation giving the premier immunity, but the Constitutional Court struck down the law on October 7, paving the way for legal cases against Berlusconi to resume.
Berlusconi is accused of paying his British former tax lawyer, David Mills, 600,000 dollars (400,000 euros) to give false evidence in two trials in the 1990s.
Police made the surprise arrest early Sunday, arriving at a cottage in Sperone, about 30 kilometres (20 miles) east of Naples, where Pasquale Russo was holed up with his brother, Carmine, 47, also a fugitive from the law since 2007. On Saturday another brother, Salvatore Russo, 51, was arrested at a farm on the outskirts of Naples. The Russo clan controlled "all the illicit activities in a vast area" comprising some 40 towns in the Naples region, police said on Saturday. The Russo brothers had reorganised the structure of Naples' Camorra mafia in the early 1990s after the boss of the region, Carmine Alfieri, turned and cooperated with the authorities, and the Russos "exercised absolute control over their territory", police said.
On Saturday another brother, Salvatore Russo, 51, was arrested at a farm on the outskirts of Naples.
The Russo clan controlled "all the illicit activities in a vast area" comprising some 40 towns in the Naples region, police said on Saturday.
The Russo brothers had reorganised the structure of Naples' Camorra mafia in the early 1990s after the boss of the region, Carmine Alfieri, turned and cooperated with the authorities, and the Russos "exercised absolute control over their territory", police said.
CCTV footage of this killing carried out in the street in broad daylight was posted on the Internet by Naples police in the hope that someone would step forward and help identify the murderer."As you can see from the images, there's a fair degree of indifference among the passers-by" Innocenzo Datri, a lawyer, works as a pro bono counsellor for a Naples neighbourhood town hall.
CCTV footage of this killing carried out in the street in broad daylight was posted on the Internet by Naples police in the hope that someone would step forward and help identify the murderer.
"As you can see from the images, there's a fair degree of indifference among the passers-by"
Innocenzo Datri, a lawyer, works as a pro bono counsellor for a Naples neighbourhood town hall.
The full video version may be seen here. There is also a version with commentary by Roberto Saviano in Italian.
Saviano also wrote an editorial on the affair. Both his audio and written commentary stress the absolute "normality" of everyone's reactions- and how distant a real execution is from film stereotypes.
Professor MAHZARIN BANAJI: Sometimes it's easy to think about helping an individual person, even though a group tragedy may not affect us. And again, the bystander problem poses a dilemma because this is about an individual human being and that person's suffering. And so, of course, there are now, we know, many, many experiments done on something called the bystander non-intervention effect, and it was done in the late '60s, following the murder of Kitty Genovese. And exactly as you say, Neal, the initial response from psychiatrists and psychologists was: Who were these horrible people who stood around watching the murder of this woman and didn't call the police? And that led to a stunning set of experiments. And the reason I say that the experiments here are so important is that because in any given case, we don't know exactly what the pressures on the situation were, and we don't know exactly what those folks experienced. And that's why when we bring complex phenomena like this into the laboratory and we put them to the test there, we can say with far greater precision what it is that's going on. And the results of two psychologists by the name of Latane and Darley stand out here because they reenacted certain situations in the laboratory, a person having a seizure, a bunch of smoke just flowing into a room, and all they varied was the number of people present. And the data show over and over again that if there was one person in the room, the likelihood of helping is around 75 percent. But as the number goes to two and three and four and five and six, the number of people who jump up to help drops to 10 percent, right? So there's something about the size of the group that, although it should lead us to be more likely to help, actually produces the counterintuitive reverse effect.
Professor MAHZARIN BANAJI: Sometimes it's easy to think about helping an individual person, even though a group tragedy may not affect us. And again, the bystander problem poses a dilemma because this is about an individual human being and that person's suffering. And so, of course, there are now, we know, many, many experiments done on something called the bystander non-intervention effect, and it was done in the late '60s, following the murder of Kitty Genovese. And exactly as you say, Neal, the initial response from psychiatrists and psychologists was: Who were these horrible people who stood around watching the murder of this woman and didn't call the police? And that led to a stunning set of experiments.
And the reason I say that the experiments here are so important is that because in any given case, we don't know exactly what the pressures on the situation were, and we don't know exactly what those folks experienced. And that's why when we bring complex phenomena like this into the laboratory and we put them to the test there, we can say with far greater precision what it is that's going on. And the results of two psychologists by the name of Latane and Darley stand out here because they reenacted certain situations in the laboratory, a person having a seizure, a bunch of smoke just flowing into a room, and all they varied was the number of people present.
And the data show over and over again that if there was one person in the room, the likelihood of helping is around 75 percent. But as the number goes to two and three and four and five and six, the number of people who jump up to help drops to 10 percent, right?
So there's something about the size of the group that, although it should lead us to be more likely to help, actually produces the counterintuitive reverse effect.
Another curious turn of events involves the Marrazzo case in which Berlusconi and his daughter could be charged with having received illegal goods, the DVD of Marrazzo being framed by cops with a trans and cocaine.
A further concern is the appeals court case against Senator Dell'Utri for cohersion with the mafia. The court has admitted the testimony of Gasparre Spatuzza. Spatuzza's collaboration with the law, along with the revelations of the son of the mafia go-between Vito Ciancimino, has shed light on the mafia's war against the state in the early 90's. Both Spatuzza and Massimo Ciancimino have declared that a political deal with Berlusconi was sought through Dell'Utri after a first deal fell through with the then powerful Democrat-Christians.
Despite the declarations of Berlusconi that he has no intention of stepping down from power if he is condemned, more opportunistic and wiser spirits are jockeying silently behind the scenes.
There is a power void in Italy these days. A silence before the tempest.
Berlusconi has literaly disappeared for ten days, first in Russia as if he were de Gaulle off to see Jacques Massu.
The most exceptional event is the closing down of parliament for the next ten days, ostensibly because there's nothing to do for lack of financial coverage. This has never happened before. Granted that this legislation has seen parliament reduced to a rubberstamp outhouse that need only meet to approve government "emergency" decrees, all without exception designed to resolve his personal affairs.
Berlusconi may be preparing a blitzkreig of brute force, for prudence and strategy are no longer his strong points. Prudence would have it to let him act out his folly for all to see. Let him be his own undoing. As with Prodi, only a single vote is needed to sink his government.
But as the Gattopardo said, "Everything changes in Italy, so that nothing changes."
