It sounds significant, until you realize that the senior Italian officials who were in on this were acquitted by reason of state security:
Charges were also dropped against five Italians, including the former head of the Sismi military intelligence service, Nicolo Pollari, because evidence against them violated state secrecy rules.So the senior people in the Italian state security apparatus, the ones who could say no, get off Scott free.
Some lower level operatives, however, got hung out to dry for following orders:
However, the judge sentenced two more junior Sismi agents to three years in prison as accomplices, indicating Italian authorities were aware of the abduction.How is "Lynndie England" spelled in Italian?
You are right, of course, that the fact that in both cases the higher ups were protected, but there is an important difference from the Lynndie England case. England was convicted for doing things that were supposedly (and to some extent really were) her own initiative. Here the lower level guys were convicted for following the orders of the higher ups. This is exactly what Obama ruled follwing the disclosure of the torture memos - prosecuting lower level CIA officers for following illegal orders.
ReplyDeleteWhile convicting the higher ups would have been much better, this is still better than nothing. At least the lower level guys will know that they put themselves in danger by following illegal orders.
Should be of course "... what Obama ruled out ..."
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