Fausta's Blog

American and Latin American Politics, Society, and Culture

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Brazil: Beam him up, Scotti

Former New Camorra capo Pasquale Scotti, convicted of 20 murders, is now jailed,

Italian Mafia Boss Arrested in BrazilPasquale Scotti, convicted of murdering more than 20 people, was detained more than 30 years after his escape

Mr. Scotti was detained in the northeastern Brazilian city of Recife at about 7 a.m. local time. He arrived in Brazil in 1986 using false identification documents, Brazilian and Italian police said Tuesday at a news conference in Brasília.

He married a local woman, with whom he has two children, and set up businesses in the area, including a real-estate brokerage and a fireworks factory, police said.

He had escaped from a hospital room following a shootout with Italian police in 1984.

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Italy: Latin American thieves pick the wrong town to hide

Italian police caught the gang behind the 2012 Buccellati heist (emphasis added):
Gang of Latin American jewelry thieves busted in Italy
‘Behind 2mn-euro Milan heist, others throughout Europe’

Police from Novara, west of Milan, were executing warrants for suspects from Colombia, Venezuela, Guatemala, Ecuador, Peru, Costa Rica and Mexico.
…
A 53-year-old Venezuelan woman is said to be the head of the gang. She is still on the loose.

I can’t imagine why would any foreigners think Novara is a good place to hide. I lived in Novara briefly years ago, and, unless the town has drastically changed since, it was a small industrial town, rarely visited by tourists, where almost no one would speak anything but Italian, unwelcoming to strangers, and where any foreigner would stick out (quite literally, since I was taller than nearly any of the locals) like a sore – and alien – thumb.

H/t Gates of Vienna.


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Nigel Farage goes to it

While the Crisis Ensnares [the European] Central Bank in Desperate Bid to Save Euro, the man who said, “If the EU ever had any intention to democratize itself it would have done so in the Constitutional Treaty,” has his say in the European Parliament:

Arrivederci, democrazia.

Countdown to failure.

UPDATE
Daniel Hannan; You can have the euro or you can have democracy – you can’t have both

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Good luck with that, Italy

Italy is still trying to get Cesare Battisti back, in spite of the fact that Lula had granted him political asylum and the Brazilian Supreme Court released him from jail.

Gates of Vienna links to Italy’s latest effort,
Italy calls for formal talks over release of convicted terrorist

Italy has instructed its ambassador to Brazil to ask the Brazilian government to form a bi-lateral commission to resolve a dispute over last week’s release of convicted Italian terrorist Cesare Battisti.

“On the instructions of foreign minister Franco Frattini, the Italian ambassador to Brazil to formally asked Brazilian authorities to activate the Permanent Commission of Conciliation as foreseen by a 1954 convention between Italy and Brazil,” the Italian foreign ministry said in a statement on Friday.

Italy and Brazil signed the agreement “for the amicable settlement of any disputes which might arise between the two countries,” the document said.
Italian judges have sentenced former far-left armed militant Battisti in absentia to life in jail for four murders committed in the 1970s. He spent three decades on the run and has lived in France, Mexico and Brazil, where he was in jail from 2007 until his release on 9 June.

Brazil’s former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s last official act before leaving office in December was to grant 56-year-old Battisti political refugee status on the recommendation of a report by Brazil’s attorney general.

Battisti remains in Brazil with his 26 year-old girlfriend and is not about to return to Italy.

As BIll Ayers famously said, “guilty as sin, and free as a bird.”

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Brazil: Battisti released from prison

Two years ago I wrote about Cesare Battisti, a terrorist who was convicted in absentia by Italy for murders committed in the 1970s.

Battisti, who escaped from an Italian prison in 1981 while awaiting trial on four counts of murder when he was a member of the Armed Proletarians for Communism, (Proletari Armati per il Comunismo – PAC), had lived in France writing crime novels until 2004, when he failed to appear to his scheduled parole visit after Paris agreed to hand him over to the Italian authorities.

From there he fled to Brazil, where he was arrested in 2007. In 2009 then-president Lula granted him political refugee status while still in prison.

Battisti was released from prison last Wednesday,

Cesare Battisti was released from a Brazil prison Wednesday after the Supreme Court rejected the extradition request—a decision that sparked outrage and indignation among Italian government officials, who had been pushing for years that Mr. Battisti be sent back to Italy to serve a lifetime prison sentence. The Italian government said Thursday that it was planning to appeal the decision with the International Court of Justice in The Hague.

The court’s decision “wounds our sense of justice and also those who have suffered in those cases,” Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi told reporters.

He was released from prison on June 9 by order of the Brazilian Supreme Court.

UPDATE,
Battisti Walks as Brazil Rejects Italy’s Appeal
Supreme court turns down attempt to overturn Lula’s decision not to extradite former terrorist, h/t Gates of Vienna

Cross-posted at Real Clear World.

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Bombs explode at Swiss and Chilean embassies in Rome VIDEO

Explosion rocks Chile embassy in Rome, second blast of day

Witnesses outside the Chilean embassy said they heard a blast shortly after 3 p.m. CET (9 a.m. ET), sending police to the scene. The ANSA news agency said the person who opened the package was wounded. It is not known whether he is a diplomat.

Three hours earlier, a package bomb exploded inside an office in the Swiss Embassy, seriously wounding the staffer who opened it. He was taken to the hospital with hand injuries, but his life is not in danger, the Swiss ambassador Bernardino Regazzoni said.

These two attacks are similar to prior ones in Greece,

In November, parcel bombs containing tiny amounts of explosives targeted a host of embassies in Athens, including those of Belgium, Mexico, Chile, Germany, France, Switzerland, Bulgaria and Russia. One package even reached the office of German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

Most of the 14 packages, all using tiny amounts of explosives, were intercepted by police and destroyed, but a delivery service employee suffered minor burns in a small blast.

A Greek militant group claimed responsibility for the spate of parcel bombings.

Following the suicide attack over the Mo cartoons in Sweden, it’s not unreasonable to rule out Islamists. The BBC reporter just now said, “no one rules out that it may be the work of al-Qaeda.”

Jawa posts a video report via Vlad,

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Italy: The new member

Wish I had made this up.

Silvio Berlusconi is at it again.
No, not with teen girls and such.
This time he’s got a new penis, at taxpayers’ expense:
New penis for statue in Silvio Berlusconi’s Rome office
A marble Roman statue of Mars has had its snapped-off penis rebuilt and reattached on the specific orders of the prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi.

Noticias24 says the 2d Century AD were originally made to a likeness of Emperor Marcus Aurelius and his wife Faustina representing Mars and Venus.

And in case you need and extra pair of hands, Faustina’s are detachable.

So is Mars’s penis.

The statues are now housed at Berlusconi’s official residence. Let the party begin!

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