No gag, no ban on using interceptions. Those who support him, those who write headlines about him, mystify, exploit and heighten the tension of political confrontation over a non-existent danger.” The weather addresses the theme of the week, namely the Government’s position on telephone interceptions, with Simonetta Matone. A member of the League, a member of the Justice Commission and a magistrate for over forty years, he therefore knows the subject well. “Do you know how interceptions in drug trafficking investigations are defined in jargon?”
It escapes us, sir
“I’ll tell you: ‘talking drug’. Precisely because they are a very useful tool. As they are for the mafia and terrorism. Nobody wants to take anything away.”
No rotation, therefore, in government?
“Absolutely not. I have carefully read what Minister of Justice Nórdio has said in the Judiciary Committee, the Senate and the House. Nowhere is there an intention to abolish wiretapping. Instead, he talks about abuse, he gives a very refined philosophy of the discourse of the law. He says that wiretapping is the basis to start with, to advance towards successful investigative models ».
What are the needs in the field?
«On the one hand, carrying out serious investigations when it comes to complex, serious and dramatic investigative phenomena. But, on the other hand, to avoid the dissemination of instrumental wiretapping. News leaks are almost always driven by different purposes related to truth-finding. So what the government is proposing to do is deal with it. I really appreciated when Nordio mentioned the way preemptive intercepts are done. They are authorized by the Attorney General of the Court of Appeal of Rome, who only he has knowledge of the secret services. Well, a line never came out. And I say this from my own experience: I spent seven years at the Attorney General’s Office and I never knew anything about the content of those wiretaps. This is a mechanism that works.”
But for the other interceptions the situation is quite different. Did the renovation that Orlando did at the time not work?
“Evidently not, because they keep coming out. We are witnessing a sieve, because the true alliance is not the Juiz de Instrução Public Prosecutor’s Office, but rather between sick parts of the judiciary with some sectors of the press. I would like to recall what Palamara writes in his book. But the assassination operations he talks about, have we forgotten them? I’ve seen people humanly ruined by wiretapping in their personal lives. It’s something that destroys.”
After the problem: the question is: how to get out of it?
“Identifying the right tools and with political will”.
Undersecretary for Justice Delmastro speaks of a civil liability crime to be applied to journalists in case of publication of irrelevant interceptions. Could this be a way out?
«I’m not in the government, so it’s not up to me to evaluate and comment on this position. The government, with the support of Parliament, will find a synthesis to block this phenomenon. But a precondition can be identified.
Which?
“We need to work so that in the judicial departments, once and for all, a cultural turn matures, in which the duty to maintain secrecy about this material is perceived”.
Source: IL Tempo
Emma Fitzgerald is an accomplished political journalist and author at The Nation View. With a background in political science and international relations, she has a deep understanding of the political landscape and the forces that shape it.
