Interceptions, first approval for the Zanettin bill: stop after 45 days. Pd and Verdi-Left abstained. Scarpinato: “This is how the investigations are dismantled”

The first approval for the bill arrives prohibit wiretapping beyond the duration of a month and a half. The Senate Judiciary Committee has approved the bill on the extension of audiences upon first signature Pierantonio Zanettin (Forza Italia), modified by an amendment presented in March by the rapporteur, the former Northern League minister Erika Stefani. The text rewrites article 267 of the code of criminal procedure: if now the wiretaps can be extended without limits by the investigating judge, at the request of the prosecutor, for successive periods of 15 days, from tomorrow they will not be able to “have a total duration exceeding 45 days, unless the absolute indispensability of the operations for a longer duration is justified by the emergence of specific and concrete elements, which must be the subject of express justification”. After protests from the Democratic Party, a second version of the Stefani amendment excluded the crimes of organized crimefor which the current regulations remain in force (forty days extendable for subsequent periods of twenty, if there are “sufficient indications”).

In order to intercept beyond the limit, therefore, the prosecutor will have to bring “specific and concrete elements” to the investigating judge. Even in this expression there is a hidden constraint: at the moment, in fact, to obtain the extension it is necessary to demonstrate (in addition to the “serious indications”) the “absolute indispensability” of the means of searching for evidence, which can be considered to exist even if the suspects, as often happens, for a certain period do not say or do nothing compromising. With the new rule, however, an investigative “result” will necessarily be needed within the first 45 days. On the amendment – passed with the consent of the majority – the M5s voted against, while the Pd and the Green and Left Alliance chose to abstain: “Erika Stefani’s amendment partially implemented our requests. But I don’t rule out that we will vote against it in the Chamber because it is an incomplete and poorly written provision”, says the leader of the Dem group in the Commission Alfredo Bazoli.

The 5 star senator is very harsh Roberto Scarpinato, former anti-mafia magistrate: “With this majority we are now at the dismantling of the main investigative tool, wiretaps. The provision approved today – which limits the listening time to just 45 days even for very serious crimes such as massacres, murders, crimes relating to violence against women foreseen by the red code, aggravated robberies and many others – is added to the other measures already approved and those in the pipeline regarding interceptions, all aimed at limiting their use for white collar crimes, thus guaranteeing their impunity even at the cost of sacrificing for this higher purpose, the fundamental need of defending citizens against the most serious forms of crime. Only the last piece is missing prohibition of trojan for white collar workers (provided for by an amendment to the cybersecurity bill, ed) and the work will be completed. To be clear, they apply the principle of boiled frog by Noam Chomsky by proceeding in installments, rather than in one lump sum,” he says.

Forza Italia, on the other hand, celebrates by remembering all the restrictive measures approved in this sense: “With this latest bill the framework of the wiretapping reform is completed. We started from the famous fact-finding investigation (conducted in the Senate Commission, ed) and then we prohibited wiretapping between lawyers and clients (in the Nordio bill, ed). Then last week we approved the regulations for the seizure of the smartphone with related data acquisition. Lastly, there is the provision approved today in the Commission”, claims Zanettin. “Thanks to Pierantonio Zanettin we managed to complete the framework of the reforms that Forza Italia wanted for wiretapping. Now we must bring these measures to the Chamber and make them become law“, is the appeal to the majority of the Italian deputy minister for Justice, Francesco Paolo Sisto.