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Up to 200 Italian police 'ran parallel anti-terror force'

Forza Mafia ! | 07.07.2005 07:57 | Culture | Education | Social Struggles | Terror War

Up to 200 police officers and former intelligence operatives are being investigated by Italian magistrates on charges of organising an illegal "parallel" police force to combat terrorism. this article doesn't mention Freemasons or Gladio but dozens of articles in the italian press do.
"I guess John Philips(also writes 4 the grauniad) aint into that kind of conspiracy theory crap so let's stick to the sheeple version INNIT !




Up to 200 Italian police 'ran parallel anti-terror force'
By John Philips in Rome
Jul 5, 2005, 07:58


Up to 200 police officers and former intelligence operatives are being investigated by Italian magistrates on charges of organising an illegal "parallel" police force to combat terrorism.

The shadowy group appears to have set itself up as a private security firm, offering protection to senior figures, and illicitly using official police resources. Its leaders have been accused of "usurping" public functions and illegal usie of classified data.

Judge Francesco Lalla, Genoa's chief prosecutor, said the self-styled "Department for Anti-terrorist Strategic Studies," (Dssa) maintained an arsenal of weaponry, stored by its accused commanders Gaetano Saya and Riccardo Sindaco, both with links with the Italian far right. The revelations have heightened many Italians' unease about the strategies of the government of Silvio Berlusconi, the Prime Minister, against Islamist terrorism.

Judicial sources said the Dssa recruited from police, paramilitary carabinieri, finance police and the armed services and presented itself to Italian institutions as well as potential recruits as an elite body specialising in fighting Islamic and Marxist terrorism.

Mr Saya, now under house arrest, had applied for €32m (£21.6m) in European Union finance and had allegedly sought contact with the Vatican to try to obtain a contract to protect of Pope Benedict against terrorist attack.

Magistrates focused on the Dssa after it allegedly claimed to have a video of the murder in Iraq of the Italian hostage Fabrizio Quatrocchi and tried to sell the footage. Investigators are trying to determine what official support the organisation may have had.

The Interior Minister, Giuseppe Pisanu, has suspended dozens of police officers who joined the network. But Carlo Taormina, an MP from Mr Berlusconi's Forza Italia party, insists Dssa was a bona fide security company with nothing to hide and "the high commands of the police and intelligence services were aware of its existence".

Il Messaggero quoted an investigator who said it was particularly disturbing that phone intercepts suggested Dssa members had been planning to kidnap Cesare Battisti, a Red Brigades activist living in exile in Paris. "We were seeing the genesis of something similar to the death squads in Argentina," the magistrate is reported to have said.

The group was charged with making unauthorised use of interior ministry data bank information as well as equipping cars with sirens and flashing lights and the official "lollipop" sticks, used by Italian police to stop traffic or wave as they break traffic regulations.

Gilberto Di Benedetto, an associate of Mr Saya who acted as a middleman with the Vatican, said most members had joined the Dssa in good faith, despite its farcical aspect. "There were people who were hoping for power or to become private investigators, but there also were many police officers and sergeants who believed the Dssa would advance their careers," he said.

La Repubblica newspaper quoted Michael Scheuer, a former CIA agent and head of the "Bin Laden unit" at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, until last November, as saying the head of Italy's military intelligence agency Sismi had authorised the CIA to abduct Abu Omar, a militant Islamic cleric who was flown from Milan to Egypt and reportedly tortured.

Mr Berlusconi's government denies knowledge of the affair, which became public after Milan magistrates issued arrest warrants for 13 CIA agents.

Forza Mafia !

Comments

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"good faith"

07.07.2005 08:27

"Gilberto Di Benedetto... said most members had joined the Dssa in good faith, despite its farcical aspect. "There were people who were hoping for power or to become private investigators, but there also were many police officers and sergeants who believed the Dssa would advance their careers," he said."

So "hoping to advance their careers" is "good faith"?

squirrel nutkin


the implications are huge

07.07.2005 08:38

this is just a small part of a wider increasingly complicated
net of intrigue and disgusting practices

foreign policy is being driven by abuse, deliberate terror.


see Diego Garcia
Royal sanctioned ethnic cleansing
for a torture Island &
Guantanamo Bay


the rendition program
Lear Jets - Corporate sponsored prison planes
Strange goings on in the Global Gulag

The forged Niger documents
and the 'Terror Ring'
that Colinn Powell used in his
speech to the UN

the Valerie Plame [CIA Handler in Egypt]
leak [to cover the Bush Junata ass] by Rove
on direct orders of BUSH

The Jailing of journalist of Judith Miller
for not revealing her sources for the leak
[told to take the fall or be executed by Bush?]
Mathew Cooper of The New York Times
has since agreed to reveal his...
Brave man or a done deal [shill?]

Negropontes [ex Honduras death squad facilitator]
now Zsar of all US intell

Death squads in Iraq - Task force 121
Rumsfelds P2OG as an excuse to carry out black ops

the kidnapping of Italian journalist Giuliana Sgrena
[what was she writing about?]

the targetting of her on her release
and the killing of
Italian agent Calipari by US forces under
Negropontes command

Italian PM's rigging of the documents

The abduction of Egyptian Abu Omar
on the Italian street by CIA agents
linked to Central America

and perhaps even the spate of
attacks on diplomats happening right now
in Iraq & the Egyptian Ambassador hostage situation


see:
 http://www.declarepeace.org.uk/captain/murder_inc/rendition.html



paul c