Author: rom wyo

The forensic investigation of the Toyota Corolla in which Nicola Calipari, a high ranking SISMI officer, lost his life closed yesterday with its deposition at the Rome Procura. Its conclusions contradict the US Army investigation, says il Manifesto in a full page scoop today, October 26th.

Nicola was killed by a single shot fired by Mario Lozano at the temporary Blocking Post, BP 541, set up in the night of March 4th for the passage of Ambassador Negroponte. Calipari had just freed Giuliana Sgrena, the reporter from il Manifesto, and was returning to the Baghdad airport to fly to Rome.

As a public service, my alter ego, Mr. de Gondi, has granted me permission to cross-post his diary on recent developments in the Nigergate caper. Updates and new diaries on the subject will continue to be first posted at Eurotrib.

Rory Carroll was released by his captors according to Ansa dispatches a few minutes ago.

We’re beside ourselves with joy, laughing and crying. Thanks so much to everybody, susanhu, Mnemosyne, everybody.

Please remember, please remember the extraordinary reporters out there and how much they have given us.

[From the diaries by susanhu.] Rory Carroll was kidnapped today by armed men as he left an apartment in Sadr City. He had been watching the Saddam trial with an Iraqi family.

Rory, 33, graduated from Trinity College in Dublin. He was nominated best new reporter of the year in 1997 in Northern Ireland. Hired by the Guardian, he was Rome correspondent from 1999 until 2002. He has been the Guardian correspondent in Baghdad for the past nine months and scheduled to leave soon. His posts from Baghdad may be accessed here.

We in Rome hope and pray for his well-being.

Francesco Fortugno, vice president of the Regional Council of Calabria was assassinated this evening as he entered the Locri polling station to vote in the center-left primaries. A practicing surgeon and university professor, he was re-elected  in the center-left party, la Margherita, this spring.

Preliminary investigation seems to point to organized crime, the Calabria n’drangheta. It is not presently known if Fortugno had received death menaces recently. The center-left president of Calabria, Agazio Loiero, had been menaced recently because of his anti-racket policies. This may point to a transversal vendetta, a purely political crime.

This assassination has a highly symbolic value as it breaks the truce of the “silent mafia.”  For the past five years the mafia has refrained from murdering elected officials, law officers and exponents of civil society on the understanding that Berlusconi would pass legislation to the mafia’s advantage.

The crime has cast a heart of darkness over the center-left primaries as, unexpectedly, over two million citizens turned out to vote. It is the first time in Italian history that primaries are being held.