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CRIME

Italy orders retrial for Americans convicted of killing police officer

Italy’s highest court on Wednesday ordered a retrial for two Americans convicted of killing an Italian police officer during a drugs bust while they were travelling in Rome.

Italy orders retrial for Americans convicted of killing police officer
Finnegan Lee Elder, convicted along with another US citizen on murder charges, speaks with his parents as he stands in a cell during the initial trial in Rome. The conviction has been thrown out and a retrial ordered. (Photo by Tiziana FABI / AFP)

In a verdict late on Wednesday, the Court of Cassation in Rome overturned the sentences handed to Finnegan Elder, 23, and Gabriel Natale-Hjorth, 22, and granted both a new appeal.

The pair had been sentenced to life in prison in May 2021 for stabbing to death policeman Mario Cerciello Rega while they were teenagers in a drugs’ bust gone wrong two years earlier in Rome.

READ ALSO: American students convicted of murdering Italian police officer

An appeals court in March 2022 reduced their sentences to 24 years for Elder, who wielded the knife, and 22 years for Natale-Hjorth, who helped hide the weapon after the attack. Prosecutors said his actions earlier in the
evening led to the murder.

The court will issue its reasons for the verdict in the coming weeks, and instruct an appeals court on the issues to examine in a new trial.

After the first trial last year, the two friends had begun serving the earlier life sentences, Italy’s harshest punishment, in separate Rome prisons.

The courtroom in Rome during the initial trial of two young US nationals for the murder of an Italian police officer on July 20th, 2020. (Photo by ANDREAS SOLARO / POOL / AFP)

“We are satisfied with the annulment of the sentence,” said Roberto Capra, the lawyer for Elder, whose new appeal is expected to consider aggravating circumstances.

“There will be a new trial on the heart of the matter – whether the carabinieri (police) identified themselves as members of law enforcement,” he added, saying this raised the potential of a new, lower sentence being imposed.

READ ALSO: ‘Worst night of my life’: US student charged with murder of Italian policeman apologises in court

The encounter between the two teenagers and the police officer and his partner on a dark Rome street lasted just 30 seconds.

Elder has admitted to stabbing Cerciello with an 11-inch (28-centimetre) knife, but he and Natale-Hjorth testified they were jumped from behind by Cerciello and his partner Andrea Varriale, both in plain clothes.

They claim they did not know the men were police, believing them to be drug dealers following the Americans’ botched attempt to buy drugs earlier in the evening.

But Varriale, the prosecution’s main witness, testified that he and Cerciello approached the teens from the front and identified themselves as police.

Lawyers for the Americans had sharply criticised the life sentences, Italy’s stiffest penalty.

They argue the lower courts have ignored inconsistencies in the testimony of Varriale – who has admitted to lying after the attack – that give credence to the defendants’ version of events.

The trial was reportedly marred by mistranslations and accusations of “inconsistencies” as well as claims that Rome prosecutors had “hidden evidence”

The murder of Cerciello, who was newly married, scandalised Italy while also raising doubts about police conduct after Natale-Hjorth was blindfolded while in custody.

The officer who blindfolded him was handed a two-month suspended sentence last month.

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CRIME

Sicilian mafia boss Messina Denaro dies after long illness

The notorious mafia boss Matteo Messina Denaro, captured in January after three decades on the run, has died in hospital in central Italy.

Sicilian mafia boss Messina Denaro dies after long illness

Matteo Messina Denaro, known as the ‘last godfather’ of the Cosa Nostra mafia and accused of a long series of heinous crimes, died in the early hours of Monday, Italian news agency Ansa announced overnight.

The 61-year-old had colon cancer, for which he had sought treatment while on the run – a decision that reportedly brought him to the attention of the authorities, who arrested him at a clinic in Palermo.

Messina Denaro was one of the most ruthless bosses in Cosa Nostra, the real-life Sicilian crime syndicate depicted in the Godfather movies.

He was convicted by the courts of involvement in the murder of anti-Mafia judge Giovanni Falcone in 1992 and in deadly bombings in Rome, Florence and Milan in 1993.

One of his six life sentences was also handed down for the kidnapping and subsequent murder of the 12-year-old son of a witness in the Falcone case.

Messina Denaro disappeared in the summer of 1993, and spent the next 30 years on the run as the Italian state cracked down on the Sicilian mob.

READ ALSO: Messina Denaro: How Italy caught ‘most wanted’ mafia boss after 30 years

But he remained the top name on Italy’s most-wanted list and, increasingly became a figure of legend.

He was arrested on January 16th as he visited a health clinic where he was being treated using a fake identity.

Mafia boss hideout in Sicily

Police officers prevent access to mafia boss Messina Denaro’s hideout in Campobello di Mazara, Sicily. Photo by Miguel MEDINA / AFP)

He was detained in a high-security jail in L’Aquila, central Italy, where he continued treatment for his cancer in his cell.

In August, Messina Denaro was moved to the inmates’ ward of the local hospital, where his condition had declined in recent days.

This weekend, media reports said he was in an “irreversible coma”. Medics had stopped feeding him and he had asked not to be resuscitated, they added.

His arrest may have brought some relief for his victims, but the mob boss always maintained his silence.

In interviews in custody since being arrested, Messina Denaro even denied he was a member of the Cosa Nostra.

Wiretaps

After Messina Denaro went on the run, there was intense speculation that he had gone abroad – and he likely did.

But in the end, he was found to have been staying near his hometown of Castelvetrano in western Sicily.

READ ALSO: Police arrest dozens in major raid on Italy’s youngest mafia

Preparations are already under way for his burial in the family tomb in the town, alongside his father, Don Ciccio, according to the Corriere della Sera newspaper.

Don Ciccio was also head of the local clan. He was said to have died of a heart attack while on the run, his body left in the countryside, dressed for the funeral.

Investigators had been combing the Sicilian countryside for Messina Denaro for years, searching for hideouts and wiretapping members of his family and his friends.

They were heard discussing the medical problems of an unnamed person who suffered from cancer, as well as eye problems – a person who detectives became sure was Messina Denaro.

They used a national health system database to search for male patients of the right age and medical history, and eventually closed in.

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