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Armed attack on Italian church in Istanbul, one dead: minister

One man died after armed assailants opened fire in an Italian church in Istanbul during Sunday mass in an apparent assassination attempt that was swiftly condemned by Pope Francis.

Armed attack on Italian church in Istanbul, one dead: minister
Turkish police in 2018. Photo: OZAN KOSE/AFP.

The attack occurred at around 11:40 (0840 GMT) at the Santa Maria church in the Sariyer district of Istanbul on the European side and was carried out by two masked men, Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya said on social media.

Turkish officials said the attack looked like a targeted attack against one person rather than against the Catholic church.

The minister said an individual identified only as C.T. — who was among those attending Sunday’s service — was the target of the gun attack and lost his life.

An investigation had been launched to find the attackers, Yerlikaya added, who fled the scene after the shooting. Local officials said around 40 people attended the mass.

Television images showed police and an ambulance outside the ornate 19th century church.

“We strongly condemn this vile attack,” Yerlikaya said.

Security footage ahead of the attack showed a pair of men wearing black snow masks with their hands in their pockets and one was seen wearing black sunglasses.

Francis expressed his support for the Catholic church after the attack. “I express my closeness to the community of the Santa Maria” church in Istanbul, the Argentinian pope said at the end of his weekly Angelus prayer in St Peter’s Square at the Vatican.

‘Firm condemnation’

Italy’s Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani also expressed his “condolences and firm condemnation” over the attack, and backed the Turkish authorities to find the killers.

The incident comes more than a week after Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni met with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Istanbul.

Turkey’s ruling AKP party spokesman Omer Celik said the attackers took aim at a citizen during the mass.

“Our security forces are conducting a large-scale investigation into the matter,” he said.  “Those who threaten the peace and security of our citizens will never
achieve their goals.”

Istanbul governor Davut Gul told reporters at the scene that there were no injuries.  The motive for the attack was also not immediately clear.

In December last year, Turkish security forces detained 32 suspects over alleged links with Islamic State jihadists who were planning attacks on churches and synagogues, as well as the Iraqi embassy.   

IS extremists have carried out a string of attacks on Turkish soil, including against a nightclub in Istanbul in 2017 that left 39 people dead.

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CRIME

Amanda Knox reconvicted in Italy in slander case linked to 2007 murder

Amanda Knox was again found guilty of slander on Wednesday, in a retrial in Italy related to her infamous jailing and later acquittal for the 2007 murder of her British roommate.

Amanda Knox reconvicted in Italy in slander case linked to 2007 murder

The American cried in court in Florence as she was sentenced to three years already served for having accused, during police questioning, an innocent bar owner of killing 21-year-old Meredith Kercher.

“I’m very sorry I was not strong enough to have resisted the police pressure,” Knox told the judges.

“I was scared, tricked and mistreated. I gave the testimony in a moment of existential crisis.”

She was 20 when she and her Italian then-boyfriend were arrested for the brutal killing of fellow student Kercher at the girls’ shared home in Perugia.

READ ALSO: ‘I hope to clear my name’: Amanda Knox back in Italy for slander retrial

The murder began a long legal saga where the pair was found guilty, acquitted, found guilty again and finally cleared of all charges in 2015.

But Knox still had a related conviction for slander, for blaming the murder on a local bar owner during initial questioning by police.

In October, Italy’s highest court threw out that conviction on appeal and ordered a retrial, which began earlier this year in Florence in Knox’s absence.

The night she was interrogated was “the worst night of my life… I was in shock, exhausted”, she said on Wednesday.

“The police interrogated me for hours and hours, in a language which I hardly knew, without an official translator or a lawyer”.

“I didn’t know who the killer was… They refused to believe me”, she said.

‘Something so horrible’

Kercher’s half-naked body was found in a pool of blood inside the roommates’ cottage in November 2007. Her throat had been slit and she had suffered multiple stab wounds.

During police questioning, Knox implicated Congolese bar owner Patrick Lumumba, who then spent almost two weeks behind bars before being released without charge.

Knox was convicted of slandering him in 2011 and sentenced to three years already served.

But she said she was yelled at and slapped during the police investigation – claims that prompted a separate charge of slandering police, of which she was cleared in 2016.

Amanda Knox arriving in court in Florence, on June 5th, 2024. (Photo by Tiziana FABI / AFP)

The police had found a message on Knox’s phone they said was proof she and Lumumba were plotting.

“They told me I had witnessed something so horrible that my mind had blocked it out,” Knox said on Wednesday. “One of the officers cuffed me round the head and said ‘remember, remember!’,” she said.

“In the end… I was forced to submit. I was too exhausted and confused to resist.”

The European Court of Human Rights in 2019 ruled that Knox had not been provided with adequate legal representation or a professional interpreter during her interrogation.

That ruling, which found her treatment “compromised the fairness of the proceedings as a whole”, was cited by Italy’s top court last year when it ordered the retrial.

‘Monster of Perugia’

Knox said last October that at the time of Kercher’s murder, Lumumba “was my friend”.

But Lumumba’s lawyer, Carlo Pacelli, described how Knox’s accusation changed his life.

“When he was accused by Amanda he became universally considered the monster of Perugia,” he told reporters outside court.

Knox was hugged by her husband in court – the same one where she was reconvicted of murder in 2014 – as reporters looked on.

Her murder trial attracted global interest, much of it salacious, focusing on prosecutors’ claims that Kercher died as part of a sex game gone wrong.

But Italy’s highest court, when it acquitted Knox and former boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito once and for all, said there had been “major flaws” in the police investigation.

One person remains convicted of Kercher’s murder — Ivorian Rudy Guede, who was linked to the scene by DNA evidence.

He was sentenced in 2008 to 30 years for murder and sexual assault, his sentence later reduced on appeal to 16 years.

Guede was released early in November 2021.

Now 36 and with two young children, Knox is a journalist, author and campaigner for criminal justice reform.

She first returned to Italy five years ago to address a conference on wrongful convictions, appearing on a panel entitled “Trial By Media”.

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