External links
- Intervista barbarica: Clementina Forleo - Daria Bignardi, Invasioni Barbariche. December 28, 2006
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Maria Clementina Forleo (born 1963, in Francavilla Fontana, province of Brindisi) is an Italian preliminary judge (Giudice per le indagini preliminari, or GIP for short) at the Court of Milan.
She came to national prominence after discovering the existence of audio tapes of telephone calls between high level Italian politicians and Stefano Ricucci and Gianpiero Fiorani. These businessmen had mysteriously become extremely rich in about only 10 years buying and selling very expensive and extravagant luxury real estate properties, with earnings around 100% to 300% over a reasonable market price. Italian journalists have speculated that this could reflect a new way of bribing politicians.
Forleo got her diploma as one of the top 25 high school students in Italy. After getting her degree in law summa cum laude from the University of Bari, she took a series of competitive exams in order to join the police or the judiciary. [1]
In 1989, having won one of the two competitive exams (certamen), Clementina Forleo became a commissioner in the Polizia di Stato. After only one month, having won the other certamen, she resigned from the Italian police in order to begin her career as a judge. During her short time in the police, she received a "solemn praise" (encomio solenne) for her work during the crisis resulting from large-scale illegal immigration from Albania and Africa into the Apulia coastal region of Italy.
Clementina Forleo became famous as a judge when she found two Tunisian nationals, Maher Boujahia and Ali Toumi, and a Moroccan, Mohamed Daki, innocent of the charge of international terrorism. Several Italian and international media organizations criticized her decision, which was motivated by the distinction between the actions committed by freedom fighters and terrorists (the first executing attacks against military targets, the second attacking helpless civilians). [2] This concept was welcomed and further amplified by the judges of the Appeal Court (Corte d'Assise d'Appello).
Later, her judgment was reversed by the Italian Supreme Court (Cassazione) and then by the second Corte d'Assise d'Appello, on October 23 of 2007, noting the terrorist, rather than military nature of the criminal plans that were attributed to the suspects. Mohamed Daki was condemned to 4 years of prison on the charge of international terrorism, and the two Tunisian nationals were sentenced to 6 years. [3] [4]
Another controversy arose when Clementina Forleo interrupted a violent arrest, involving an officer who was later expelled from the police force. On July 8, 2005, she protested against the violent arrest of an African outside a subway station, after he was found without a valid ticket during a routine check on the train. Forleo arrived at the scene of the arrest, identified herself as a magistrate, and made a complaint about excessive violence on the part of the group of policemen, who then decided to sue her. [5]
One of the most important inquiries done by Clementina Forleo involved the purchase of Banca Antonveneta in the so-called Bancopoli scandal. This brought her harsh criticism by many members (Clemente Mastella, Massimo D'Alema) of the center-left coalition headed by Premier Romano Prodi.
She received an anonymous letter threatening her parents with death by car crash. This became reality on August 28, 2005, when her mother and her father lost their lives in a car crash on the road connecting Francavilla Fontana and Sava, in the province of Brindisi. Her father was Gaspare Forleo, 77, an attorney and former mayor of Francavilla Fontana, and her mother was Stella Bungaro, 75, a high school math teacher. [6]
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Mario Borghezio is an Italian politician from the Northern League.
The Piazza Fontana bombing was a terrorist attack that occurred on 12 December 1969 when a bomb exploded at the headquarters of Banca Nazionale dell'Agricoltura in Piazza Fontana in Milan, Italy, killing 17 people and wounding 88. The same afternoon, three more bombs were detonated in Rome and Milan, and another was found unexploded. The attack was carried out by the far-right, neo-fascist paramilitary terrorist group Ordine Nuovo and, possibly, certain undetermined collaborators.
Trials and allegations involving Silvio Berlusconi have been extensive and include abuse of office, bribery and corruption of police officers, judges and politicians, collusion, defamation, embezzlement, extortion, false accounting, mafia, money laundering, perjury, tax fraud, underage prostitution influence and witness tampering.
Francavilla Fontana is a town and comune (municipality) in the province of Brindisi and region of Apulia, in southern Italy. It is also called the town of the "Imperiali", after the Imperiali, a family of feudal lords who ruled the town from the end of 16th century until the 18th century. With a population of 36,358, in 2017, it is the third municipality of its province after Brindisi and Fasano. Its one of the many towns in south Italy where the Greek dialect Griko is spoken.
Salvatore "Totò" Cuffaro is a former Italian politician and former President of Sicily. He has served an almost 5-year jail sentence for aiding Cosa Nostra. He has earned the nickname Vasa Vasa for his tendency to kiss all and sundry – he claims that he has kissed a quarter of all the people on the island.
The so-called Cogne case involved the death of three-year-old Samuele Lorenzi. On 30 January 2002 while sleeping in his parents' bed in his family home in the mountain village of Montroz, hamlet of Cogne, in Aosta Valley, northern Italy. The cause of death was found to be a blow to the skull. The murder weapon has never been found.
The Years of Lead is a term used for a period of social and political turmoil in Italy that lasted from the late 1960s until the late 1980s, marked by a wave of both far-left and far-right incidents of political terrorism.
The Corte d'Assise is an Italian court composed of two professional, stipendiary judges or giudici togati; and six lay judges or giudici popolari, who are selected from the people. The Corte d'Assise has jurisdiction to try all crimes carrying a maximum penalty of 24 years in prison or more. These are the most serious crimes, such as terrorism and murder. Also slavery, killing a consenting human being, and helping a person to commit suicide are serious crimes that are tried by this court. Penalties imposed by the court can include life sentences (ergastolo). The Corte d'Assise does not preside over cases involving attempted murder. The prosecution is conducted by the Public Prosecutor. Decisions are made by giudici togati and giudici popolari together at a special meeting held behind closed doors, named Council Chamber, and the Corte d'Assise is required to publish written explanations of its decisions.
Giuseppe Guttadauro is an Italian Mafia boss and a high-profile surgeon from the Rocella neighbourhood in Palermo. Born in Bagheria, he became the regent of the Brancaccio mandamento after the arrest and subsequent incarceration of the Mafia boss Gaspare Spatuzza in 1998.
Gianpiero Fiorani, is an Italian banker and manager who was implicated in the Italian banking scandal of 2005 known as "Bancopoli".
"Bancopoli" was the name coined by the Italian press for the finance and banking scandals between July 2005 and January 2006. The Italian Banca Popolare Italiana (BPI), in competition with Holland's ABN AMRO for control of Banca Antonveneta, was given an unfair advantage by Banca d'Italia's president, Antonio Fazio.
The Spartacus Maxi-Trial(Italian: Processo Spartacus) was a series of criminal trials, each specifically directed against the activities of the powerful Casalesi clan of the Camorra. The trial was opened at the Corte d'Assise of Santa Maria Capua Vetere in Caserta. It was named after the historical gladiator, Spartacus, and so named in recognition of the need to fight a revolt in the Casalesi clan's territory. The trial was initially chaired by its president, Catello Marano on 1 July 1998. It continued just over ten years, until its final verdict was eventually read on 19 June 2008.
The Italian Code of Criminal Procedure contains the rules governing criminal procedure in every court in Italy. The Italian legal order adopted four codes since the Italian Unification. After the first two codes, in 1865 and 1913, the Fascist Government established in 1930 a new code adopting an inquisitorial system. In 1988 the Italian Republic adopted a new code, that could be considered to be somewhere in between the inquisitorial system and the adversarial system.
The judiciary of Italy is a system of courts that interpret and apply the law in the Italian Republic. In Italy, judges are public officials and, since they exercise one of the sovereign powers of the State, only Italian citizens are eligible for judgeship. In order to become a judge, applicants must obtain a degree of higher education as well as pass written and oral examinations. However, most training and experience is gained through the judicial organization itself. The potential candidates then work their way up from the bottom through promotions.
Meredith Susanna Cara Kercher was a British student on exchange from the University of Leeds who was murdered at the age of 21 in Perugia, Italy. Kercher was found dead on the floor of her bedroom. By the time the bloodstained fingerprints at the scene were identified as belonging to Rudy Guede, police had charged Kercher's American roommate, Amanda Knox, and Knox's Italian boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito. The subsequent prosecutions of Knox and Sollecito received international publicity, with forensic experts and jurists taking a critical view of the evidence supporting the initial guilty verdicts.
Mauro Del Giudice was an Italian magistrate, jurist and writer.
Yara Gambirasio was a 13-year-old Italian girl killed on the evening of 26 November 2010.
The Capaci bombing was a terror attack by the Sicilian Mafia that took place on 23 May 1992 on Highway A29, close to the junction of Capaci, Sicily. It killed magistrate Giovanni Falcone, his wife Francesca Morvillo, and three police escort agents, Vito Schifani, Rocco Dicillo and Antonio Montinaro; agents Paolo Capuzza, Angelo Corbo, Gaspare Bravo and Giuseppe Costanza survived.
