Thursday was a sad day for the party of disgrace (PDS): almost a mourning on the arm. We would say it is an almost dramatic day for all those who in recent years have tried to affirm a toxic idea within the public debate. An idea that, roughly speaking, we could try to summarize like this: the main task of justice is not only to unmask the malfeasance of society, but is also to bring out the immoral behavior of the most powerful citizens. And to get closer to this important objective, Italian magistrates have every right to put the judicial apparatus at the service not only of justice but also of morality. And consequently they have the ethical duty to offer the free press useful material to be able to build, with the complicity of the judicial reporters who have transformed themselves when necessary into the letterbox of the showgirls of the prosecutor’s offices, the essential media process, necessary to offer the people’s court the right coordinates to morally condemn even those who do not have sufficient evidence to be convicted in a courtroom.
Thursday was a sad day for the party of disgrace (PDS): almost a mourning on the arm. We would say it is an almost dramatic day for all those who in recent years have tried to affirm a toxic idea within the public debate. An idea that, roughly speaking, we could try to summarize like this: the main task of justice is not only to unmask the malfeasance of society, but is also to bring out the immoral behavior of the most powerful citizens. And to get closer to this important objective, Italian magistrates have every right to put the judicial apparatus at the service not only of justice but also of morality. And consequently they have the ethical duty to offer the free press useful material to be able to build, with the complicity of the judicial reporters who have transformed themselves when necessary into the letterbox of the showgirls of the prosecutor’s offices, the essential media process, necessary to offer the people’s court the right coordinates to morally condemn even those who do not have sufficient evidence to be convicted in a courtroom.
The day before yesterday, we were saying, was a dramatic day for the party of disgrace. The European Court of Human Rights unanimously held that there had been a violation of Article 8 (right to respect for privacy, private life and correspondence) of the ECHR Convention in a particular case: the interception and transcription of communications telephone calls from Bruno Contrada in the proceedings on the murder of Nino Agostino in which the former Sisde official was neither accused nor under investigation.
Listen to what the ECtHR says: “The Court concluded that Italian law did not offer adequate and effective guarantees against abuse to people who had been subjected to an interception measure but who, not being suspected or accused of involvement in a crime, did not were parties to the proceedings. In particular, no provision provided that these subjects could turn to a judicial authority for an effective control of the legitimacy and necessity of the measure and to obtain adequate compensation, as the case may be.” If it wasn’t clear enough, the most important European body that deals with the protection of human rights says that Italy, regarding wiretapping, is doubly an enemy of human rights. It allows there to be a mechanism that allows us to intercept, and therefore disgrace, people who are not involved in the investigations. And it does not allow people who have suffered damage from these interceptions, because they were disgraced, to receive compensation.
The question should be clear: the way in which Italian magistrates interpret article 267 of the Criminal Procedure Code, which allows the prosecutor to approve wiretaps with a reasoned decree when there are “serious indications of a crime”, is a completely wrong way which, focusing on suspicions and not on the evidence, offers the magistrate the possibility of intercepting anyone, thanks to that monstrosity called trawl interception. When fundamental rights are touched upon, such as privacy, the guarantees towards uninvestigated persons must be maximum and the idea that any uninvestigated person can “pop up” in an interception just because that intercepted name can helping the media process to support investigations carried out with feet, without evidence, without crimes, without a smoking gun, is an idea that can work well in totalitarian states but it is an idea that does not adapt well to those who care about non-negotiable values of the rule of law. There is a judge in Europe. Listening to him, as well as the legislators, should also be those who have chosen to transform journalism into a spectacle worthy of the zoo, where alongside the rhinos, seals and giraffes, the poisonous parrots of the prosecutor’s offices stand out behind the windows.
