Canadian News Magazine Hints ‘Obamamisery’ Could Cause ‘The End of Obama’
September 30, 2011 No Comment
The Canadian news magazine Macleans is not a conservative publication. It actually published a cover in 2007
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French leader praises Papandreou’s commitment to austerity French president Nicolas Sarkozy is to hold urgent talks in Germany with chancellor Angela Merkel on speeding up the rescue plan for the euro. Sarkozy said on Friday the talks would take place within days as uncertainty about the eurozone’s stability and worries about deepening recession returned to European markets. Declaring after talks with Greek premier George Papandreou that “a failure of Greece would be a failure for all of Europe”, the French president praised Athens for its determination to meet its commitments and said: “There can be no question of dropping Greece.” His comments came as European leaders turned up the heat on Slovakia to approve the enhanced eurozone rescue fund amid growing fears it could yet scupper the scheme. Only a day after huge relief at Germany’s decision to endorse the expanded bailout fund, anxiety stalked markets and the corridors of power as eurozone inflation rose to a three-year high of 3%, shares in French banks plunged as much as 10% and Denmark’s central bank offered 400bn krone (£46bn) in emergency liquidity for the country’s banks. There was renewed talk of a Greek debt default and larger “haircuts” for private bondholders as Papandreou sought backing for a further €8bn (£6.8bn) lifeline to save his country’s treasury from bankruptcy. Sarkozy said: “There is a moral and economic obligation of solidarity with Greece.” Papandreou in turn told reporters that his nation was making all the required sacrifices and reforms. “I wish to make it perfectly clear that Greece, I myself, our government, the Greek people, are determined to make the necessary changes.” Yet conflict sprang up anew over plans to set up an even bigger rescue fund for the eurozone, with leading European bankers demanding an outline agreement on a new scheme by the time G20 finance ministers meet in mid-October. Austria brought some solace, becoming the 14th eurozone member to endorse enhanced powers for the €440bn European Financial Stability Facility when its parliament voted 117 to 53 to raise their country’s contribution to €21.6bn. After the Bundestag voted overwhelmingly in favour on Thursday, Germany’s second chamber, the Bundesrat, followed suit – leaving only Malta (next week), the Netherlands (on 6 October) and Slovakia to vote. The first two are expected to endorse the enhanced EFSF even though the Dutch minority government will have to rely heavily on the opposition for support. But the coalition government of Slovakian premier Iveta Radicova – who has held private talks with Merkel on the issue – has been seeking concessions from its eurozone partners. One of the four parties in the coalition, the Freedom and Solidarity (SaS) party, is, according to varying reports, either digging in its heels, refusing to endorse the expanded EFSF, or moving closer to a compromise. Opposition support is said to be uncertain. Radicova wants to secure the Slovak parliament’s endorsement before she attends the next EU summit on 17 October, but her requests for concessions to help her win that backing have been rejected so far. In Brussels, aides to Olli Rehn, the economic and monetary affairs commissioner, ruled out any changes to the 21 July package to enhance the EFSF. Asked by Slovak reporters if there was a Plan B, as Radicova could not deliver, they said: “There’s no Plan B as Plan A was unanimously approved by all the 17 leaders in July as the vital tool to ensure financial stability in the euro area.” Reuters reported from Bratislava, the Slovak capital, that Maros Sefcovic, a European commissioner, had said: “I cannot imagine renegotiation of [EFSF] documents and agreements beyond what they agreed … after so many countries, including Germany, approved it.” A Slovak no vote might force eurozone leaders to conclude a new deal without Bratislava, or they could take on the country’s €3.5bn contribution to the enhanced EFSF guarantees of €780bn and share it out among themselves. Alternatively, they could agree to shave those guarantees by a small amount. The uncertainty spilled over into markets worried that the surge in eurozone inflation to 3% could stop the European Central Bank cutting interest rates when it meets in Berlin next week. The ECB meeting, the last of his eight-year term for its president, Jean-Claude Trichet, is expected to reverse the two rate increases it imposed this year, amid widespread criticism that its erroneous judgment had simply deepened the prospects of renewed recession. The bank is now thought more likely to continue to offer more liquidity to eurozone banks, which are terrified by the merest hint of a Greek default. As German coalition ministers continued to fall out over “leveraging up” the EFSF, it was being said in banking circles that the key response would be to get the ECB to endorse proposals to turn the facility into an insurance scheme for providing first-loss guarantees. Wilbur Ross, the private equity billionaire, told Bloomberg TV: “I not convinced that this bailout package is going to be remotely enough … I think it should start with a T [for trillion], not a B [for billion].” European debt crisis Nicolas Sarkozy Angela Merkel Germany France Greece European banks Europe David Gow guardian.co.uk
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Global outcry as 20 medics prepare to go to jail for helping protesters during the Arab spring’s forgotten uprising Dr Ali al-Akri sits at home in Bahrain waiting for the jailer to call. When it happens, probably within days, the veteran physician will pack his bag, kiss his family goodbye and go to the prison that he will probably call home for the next 15 years. “I’ll do what I have to do,” he says, “if that means that Bahrain will be a better place. And all of the doctors convicted with me will do the same.” The 20 Bahraini medics who were sentenced on Thursday to prison terms of between five and 15 years remain on bail in Manama, but all are sure that their fate has been sealed by the military court that convicted them of a range of subversive crimes, some of which the government claims amount to acts of terrorism. The sentences have drawn widespread international condemnation and refocused attention on the uprising in the tiny Gulf state that faded away as the rest of the region boiled. When nobody was looking, Bahrain’s revolution died. “And this is what happens now,” said Hussein al-Musawi, a protester who ran an information tent at the now defunct Pearl Square roundabout, which was the main protest hub. “We’re in a grieving period for a stillborn promise.” The plight of the medics – 18 doctors and two paramedics – continued to attract criticism , with the US saying it was deeply disturbed by the sentences and the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights saying it had “severe concerns”. Several of the doctors said their ordeal during the six months since they were arrested in Bahrain’s main hospital – the Salmaniya medical centre – has left them crushed and dispirited. In February they were catapulted to the vanguard of a protest movement that shook the foundations of the kingdom. The doctors say they became unwitting participants in a series of events that rapidly overtook them. As protesters were chased away from Pearl Square they began regrouping in the grounds of the hospital. It was the only place they said they felt safe from security forces. And that, according to al-Akri, is when the trouble started for the medics. “We knew right from the beginning that our issue was about politics,” he said one day after being sentenced on various charges of committing crimes against the state. “We were as far away from politics as you could be but we found ourselves in the centre of it because were treating the victims.” The doctors were the highest-profile group to be convicted over the past six months, which has seen many hundreds of arrests and a purge of suspected protesters from government jobs. The ruling al-Khalifa family has pledged reforms in the Sunni-led state that rules over a large Shia majority, which it accuses of having ties to Iran. “It’s all lies,” said al-Akri. “We have nothing to do with Iran and we want nothing to do with Iran. There is not a single incident that they could point to that would reinforce the view that Bahrain’s Shias are carrying out an Iranian agenda.” Matar Matar, a former opposition lawmaker from the al-Wefaq party, is also on bail, accused of offences against the state. He said little he has seen has given him reason to think things will change. “There have been no improvements on the ground,” he said. “The situation has gone from bad to worse. They are ignoring change and trying to deny that there is a movement for reform. “But they are under a lot of pressure too. The economic situation here is very bad and they don’t have anything on the horizon. They can no longer convince Saudi businessmen to come here.” Saudi Arabia remains firmly in Bahrain’s camp, seemingly convinced that the crackdown it helped lead has saved the tiny kingdom from peril, and spared its own country from an uprising that it continues to see through a sectarian prism Bahraini officials released more details on the alleged activities of the doctors. They included using the hospital as a political platform, preventing some patients from receiving treatment, inviting foreign media and other non-medics into trauma areas, and storing weapons in the hospital, where an AK-47 and some bladed weapons were reportedly found. The doctors say they had no role in stopping ambulances, but admitted joining political rallies. “It was the security forces who [stopped the ambulances] and that was proven during the trial,” said al-Akri. “There was evidence from the dispatchers and statements from the security forces themeselves. “We were outraged when the ambulances were stopped and we led protests calling for the removal of the health minister. When he was sacked, we stopped.” “We witnessed the atrocities. And because we did not obey [the government] we are being punished.” And then he offered an optimistic tone — of sorts. “There is a bottleneck now and things should ease. The government is feeling political, social and financial pressures and all have their limits. Nobody feels safe here now, people of either sect. Nobody is comfortable anymore and that cannot last.” Bahrain Middle East Arab and Middle East unrest Martin Chulov guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Oh, the irony, the sweet, sweet irony. From the bowels of the Cato Institute, an email exchange surfaced. An email exchange between Charles Koch and Friedrich Hayek , king of the free-markets-rule economic theory where Koch tries to lure Hayek to the Institute of Human Studies by extolling the virtues of Medicare as the safety net that would protect Hayek from being excluded from health insurance coverage if he were to leave Austria. Via The Nation : This extraordinary correspondence regarding Social Security began in early June 1973, weeks after Koch was appointed president of the Institute for Humane Studies. Along with his brothers, Koch inherited his father’s privately held oil company in 1967, becoming one of the richest men in America. He used this fortune to help turn the IHS, then based in Menlo Park, California, into one of the world’s foremost libertarian think tanks. Soon after taking over as president, Koch invited Hayek to serve as the institute’s “distinguished senior scholar” in preparation for its first conference on Austrian economics, to be held in June 1974. Hayek initially declined Koch’s offer. In a letter to IHS secretary Kenneth Templeton Jr., dated June 16, 1973, Hayek explains that he underwent gall bladder surgery in Austria earlier that year, which only heightened his fear of “the problems (and costs) of falling ill away from home.” (Thanks to waves of progressive reforms, postwar Austria had near universal healthcare and robust social insurance plans that Hayek would have been eligible for.) IHS vice president George Pearson (who later became a top Koch Industries executive) responded three weeks later, conceding that it was all but impossible to arrange affordable private medical insurance for Hayek in the United States. However, thanks to research by Yale Brozen, a libertarian economist at the University of Chicago, Pearson happily reported that “social security was passed at the University of Chicago while you [Hayek] were there in 1951. You had an option of being in the program. If you so elected at that time, you may be entitled to coverage now.” Now we all know that Charles Koch loathes Social Security and Medicare and has spent millions upon millions to build a conservative stronghold to take them down and kill them forever. So check out this email from the man himself: Koch writes: “You may be interested in the information that we uncovered on the insurance and other benefits that would be available to you in this country. Since you have paid into the United States Social Security Program for a full forty quarters, you are entitled to Social Security payments while living anywhere in the Free World. Also, at any time you are in the United States, you are automatically entitled to hospital coverage.” Then, taking on the unlikely role of Social Security Administration customer service rep, Koch adds, “In order to be eligible for medical coverage you must apply during the registration period which is anytime from January 1 to March 31. For your further information, I am enclosing a pamphlet on Social Security.” How about that? Charles Koch, Medicare advocate for his favored group, just not for everybody?
Continue reading …Media Cast Bush as Rights Abuser, Gloss Over Obama’s Killing of U.S. Citizen
September 30, 2011 No Comment
The three network morning shows on Friday all highlighted the United States' success in killing terrorist Anwar al Awlaki. However, although these same programs were sensitive to the slightest possible civil rights violation by the Bush administration, they did not seemed interested the fact that Al Awlaki was an American citizen. Good Morning America, Today and the Early Show mentioned this detail, but didn't provide any analysis or question the President's authority to make such a move. GMA's Brian Ross simply offered, ” He was considered such a serious threat to the U.S. that the President had authorized the use of lethal force against him, even though he was an American citizen .” Early Show and Today simply both described al Awlaki as an “American” or “American-born.” CBS's Bill Plante noted that Awlaki was “the first American who was ever placed on the CIA's kill or capture list.” Writing on ABC News.com , Jake Tapper and Jason Ryan explained: How does President Obama have the right to target for killing a US citizen such as Anwar al-Awlaki? That’s a good question. As of now, the administration’s legal justification is unclear. … Needless to say, this unprecedented ruling has been severely criticized – and all the more so today, with the assassination having been carried out. The points raised by Tapper online weren't repeated on GMA. ABC's Brian Ross gave only biographical information on al Awlaki: “Born in the United States, in New Mexico in 1971, Anwar al Awlaki went to college in Colorado before heading up mosques in San Diego and Virginia.” [ Friday readers : We need today to be our big day! Show your support for NewsBusters by helping us reach our $5,000 goal today. Donate now and get a liberal media bias gift as a thank you.] In contrast, on the April 16, 2009 World News, reporter Jan Crawford covered the “chilling” revelation that detained terror suspects such as Abu Zubayda were “tortured with an insect in a confinement box” by the U.S. A just-released report by the Media Research Center, Red, White, and Partisan , showed that journalists saw civil liberty abuses everywhere during the Bush years. On the first anniversary of 9/11, NBC reporter Jim Avila mourned: JIM AVILA: “This is Jeanean Othman, an American of Palestinian descent. Born 42 years ago in suburban Chicago. Now worried everything she learned as an American about justice and civil rights collapsed along with New York’s Twin Towers.” In the report, the MRC's Tim Graham reminded: On ABC’s Nightline on December 19, 2005, Terry Moran threw this hardball at Vice President Dick Cheney: “I’d like to put this personally, if I can. You’re a grandfather. I’m a father. When we look at those girls and we think that the country we’re about to pass to them is a country where the Vice President can’t say whether or not we have secret prisons around the world, whether water-boarding and mock executions is consistent with our values, and a country where the government is surveilling Americans without the warrant of a court – is that the country we want to pass on to them?” The same networks that fretted over insect “torture” and threats to civil liberties should also follow up on the Obama administration's killing of an American citizen. A transcript of the September 30 GMA segment, which aired at 7:03am EDT, follows: GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: Let's bring in ABC's chief investigative correspondent, Brian Ross. Of course, Brian, you've been tracking al Awlaki for years and his links go all the way back to 9/11. He even met with two of the 9/11 hijackers. BRIAN ROSS: That's right, George. He was considered such a serious threat to the U.S. that the President had authorized the use of lethal force against him, even though he was an American citizen. The United States has been seeking to kill or capture al Awlaki, for almost two years. LEON PANETTA (Secretary of Defense): Awlaki is a terrorist. MICHAEL LEITER (National Counter Terrorism Center):
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Author Polina Zherebtsova – who was 14 when conflict began – publishes journal on taboo subject despite death threats Polina Zherebtsova was 14 when the bombs started raining down. They hit the market where she worked with her mother, the streets she walked down daily, until Grozny was reduced to rubble, a hometown no longer recognisable. From the start, Zherebtsova wrote about it, an act of catharsis as much as a document on the second Chechnya war. She filled dozens of diaries in a messy, scribbled cursive, sometimes embellished with doodles – bomb blasts that look like flowers, blocks of flats seen from a distance. This week, despite death threats and fears for her safety, Zherebtsova published Polina Zherebtsova’s Diary, gathering three years’ worth of journals for a rare look into daily life in Grozny under siege. “I thought, when they kill me, people will find this diary,” Zherebtsova said in Moscow, where she has been living since 2006. “I thought, people will read this diary and understand there is never a need to fight.” Filled with the horrors of war and the daily concerns of a teenage girl, the book has already prompted comparisons with the diary of Anne Frank. But Zherebtsova prefers to be likened to Tanya Savicheva, who chronicled the slow death of her family during the siege of Leningrad. “It kept me from going crazy,” Zherebtsova, 26, said, her dyed blonde fringe peeking out from under a headscarf and long gold earrings adorned with dolphins framing her lightly freckled face. She spent the entire war in Chechnya as tens of thousands died or fled during Moscow’s brutal attempt to pacify the mainly Muslim republic. Although extracts have been published in Russian magazines to wide acclaim, Zherebtsova still works odd jobs to make ends meet: she publishes articles and works as a nanny, sometimes as a consultant, sometimes as a secretary. Almost every day includes a doctor’s visit to nurse the wounds – physical and psychological – that remain. A bomb attack left shrapnel in her right leg and after several operations to remove the pieces, it is still painful. Her teeth fell out after weeks of hunger and years of malnutrition. The nightmares, she said, have eased since she finished the book but they persist. The fear of death in war has now been replaced with the fear that writing about the horrors of Chechnya – a still taboo subject – will bring repercussions. One by one, publishing houses refused to publish the book. “Everyone said they really liked it but wanted no problems with the government,” she said. Last autumn, she finally found a saviour in Detektiv-Press, a small publisher devoted mainly to history books and memoirs. Days later, the calls began. “One time they said: ‘So, you will write about Chechnya? Do you want to live?’ I don’t know who it was,” Zherebtsova said. Since then, the calls have come dozens of times over, from unknown numbers. No words are ever exchanged. In the past two weeks, her husband has been targeted instead, sometimes getting 20 calls a day. Zherebtsova was once attacked in a lift by a man she is certain was waiting for her. But something pushed her forward. “I was always having nightmares about this war,” she said. “These civilians who were killed would come to me in my sleep and I felt I had a duty to them. I felt I had to tell it.” It is a tradition among the women in the family to keep a diary, and Zherebtsova began when she was nine after her grandfather, a well-known journalist in Grozny, was killed in the early days of the first Chechen war. “We thought there would be no more war, and then it started again,” she says of a conflict that raged from 1994-96, died down for three years, and then reignited. Zherebtsova takes great pains to paint her family as ethnically mixed, and in the book describes how she is mainly Russian on her mother’s side, and Chechen on her father’s, although she never knew him. Ethnic tension remains sharp in the north Caucasus, and Zherebtsova hopes to avoid politicising the republic’s suffering. “I don’t scold anyone in particular, neither the rebels nor the Russian soldiers,” she said. “There is no evil in the book – just the life of civilians who fell into life in war.” Zherebtsova fled Chechnya in 2005, first to the south of Russia before making her way to Moscow thanks to a grant from Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s foundation. She says she will never go back. “It’s a different country now, one that is no longer mine,” she said. “My dream now is to leave and live in a normal country.”. “There is no life here. If there’s no war, then there’s revolution.” Zherebtsova holds little hope that Russia can change, yet there must be some. The book’s dedication reads: “Dedicated to the rulers of modern Russia.” Chechnya Russia Europe Miriam Elder guardian.co.uk
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Christine Hemming is convicted of burglary after stealing the cat days after separating from the Lib Dem MP An MP’s wife caught on CCTV stealing a kitten from the home of her husband’s lover has been found guilty of burglary. Jurors at Birmingham crown court took just over five hours to convict Christine Hemming, 53, who snatched the cat three days after separating from the Liberal Democrat John Hemming. CCTV footage of the offence shows Hemming crawling on her hands and knees underneath a window before sneaking into the home of Emily Cox. Hemming, who showed no reaction as the verdict was returned, will be sentenced next month. She had acknowledged that she went to Cox’s house on the night the kitten, named Beauty, was last seen. Claiming she visited the property to deliver items of post for her husband, Hemming had told jurors: “I had no intention of stealing a cat – either before I went to the property, when I was at the property, when I left the property, and subsequently.” She was bailed to appear at Birmingham crown court on 28 October. Crime Liberal Democrats Animals guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Christine Hemming is convicted of burglary after stealing the cat days after separating from the Lib Dem MP An MP’s wife caught on CCTV stealing a kitten from the home of her husband’s lover has been found guilty of burglary. Jurors at Birmingham crown court took just over five hours to convict Christine Hemming, 53, who snatched the cat three days after separating from the Liberal Democrat John Hemming. CCTV footage of the offence shows Hemming crawling on her hands and knees underneath a window before sneaking into the home of Emily Cox. Hemming, who showed no reaction as the verdict was returned, will be sentenced next month. She had acknowledged that she went to Cox’s house on the night the kitten, named Beauty, was last seen. Claiming she visited the property to deliver items of post for her husband, Hemming had told jurors: “I had no intention of stealing a cat – either before I went to the property, when I was at the property, when I left the property, and subsequently.” She was bailed to appear at Birmingham crown court on 28 October. Crime Liberal Democrats Animals guardian.co.uk
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Family of victim Meredith Kercher had difficulty finding air tickets, says lawyer as appeal comes to an end Amanda Knox was said to have a plane standing by to whisk her out of Italy if her appeal was upheld, whereas the family of her alleged victim, the British student, Meredith Kercher, were having difficulty getting air tickets to be in court for the decision, their lawyer said on Friday. Francesco Maresca was speaking as the appeal by the 24-year-old Knox and her former Italian boyfriend built towards a much-anticipated climax. In line with Italian court practice, each of the parties to the case was given a last chance to sway the two professional and six lay judges. According to unconfirmed reports in the Italian media, a US television network has put a private jet at the disposal of the Knox family. “Well now,” said Maresca when his turn came to speak. “The Kercher family has problems finding the tickets to come here to hear the outcome on Monday morning.” Money, class and race were all deployed on the penultimate day of an appeal that has also been rich in allusions to sex, religion and even the occult. According to the prosecution, Kercher died resisting a violent sex game involving the appellants and Rudy Guede from Ivory Coast. The defence’s central argument has been that Guede, who has been definitively convicted of the murder, killed Kercher on his own after breaking in to the flat she shared with Knox. The young American’s former boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, is the son of a prosperous urologist. The Knoxes are not rich but, said Giuliano Mignini for the prosecution, they had spent $1m on a PR campaign in defence of their daughter’s innocence. Mignini, who oversaw the original investigation, pointedly referred to the appellants as being “of good families”, contrasting their fate in the event of an acquittal with that of a “poor black man”. His remark came in a speech in which he claimed, as evidence of the appellants’ guilt, their reaction to gruesome images of the murder scene shown in court. “At the trial, Amanda never looked at them. Never. Raffaele looked every so often with one eye – icy, expressionless.” His jibe was described as “truly unfair” by Sollecito’s counsel, Donatella Donati. Her client, brought up by his father after his mother’s death, was simply “shy about showing his emotions”. It was followed by a defence onslaught on the evidence, with lawyers appearing to hint Knox and Sollecito were framed.But Donati came closer than anyone to making the charge explicit. She recalled that, after her client was arrested, his father had appeared on a show presented by one of Italy’s best-known TV journalists. Having heard of some of the alleged weaknesses in the police case, the presenter had remarked that, if such claims were true, “Someone will have to pay”. The following morning, said Donati, the police found at the scene of the crime Kercher’s bra clasp, which had lain there, apparently unnoticed, for more than six weeks. On examination the clasp was found to bear a trace of Sollecito’s DNA, though court-appointed experts reported in June that the evidence might have got there by contamination. Donati noted that the clasp also bore the DNA of two other men, and that neither of them was Guede. “So, who were those other men?”, she asked. Closing her address to the court, Donati said it was the defence that had gone after the truth in this case, even though under the Italian system that was the job of the prosecution. “Raffaele Sollecito has no fear of the truth”, she declared with the clear implication that his prosecutors might. Amanda Knox United States Meredith Kercher Italy Europe John Hooper guardian.co.uk
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Family of victim Meredith Kercher had difficulty finding air tickets, says lawyer as appeal comes to an end Amanda Knox was said to have a plane standing by to whisk her out of Italy if her appeal was upheld, whereas the family of her alleged victim, the British student, Meredith Kercher, were having difficulty getting air tickets to be in court for the decision, their lawyer said on Friday. Francesco Maresca was speaking as the appeal by the 24-year-old Knox and her former Italian boyfriend built towards a much-anticipated climax. In line with Italian court practice, each of the parties to the case was given a last chance to sway the two professional and six lay judges. According to unconfirmed reports in the Italian media, a US television network has put a private jet at the disposal of the Knox family. “Well now,” said Maresca when his turn came to speak. “The Kercher family has problems finding the tickets to come here to hear the outcome on Monday morning.” Money, class and race were all deployed on the penultimate day of an appeal that has also been rich in allusions to sex, religion and even the occult. According to the prosecution, Kercher died resisting a violent sex game involving the appellants and Rudy Guede from Ivory Coast. The defence’s central argument has been that Guede, who has been definitively convicted of the murder, killed Kercher on his own after breaking in to the flat she shared with Knox. The young American’s former boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, is the son of a prosperous urologist. The Knoxes are not rich but, said Giuliano Mignini for the prosecution, they had spent $1m on a PR campaign in defence of their daughter’s innocence. Mignini, who oversaw the original investigation, pointedly referred to the appellants as being “of good families”, contrasting their fate in the event of an acquittal with that of a “poor black man”. His remark came in a speech in which he claimed, as evidence of the appellants’ guilt, their reaction to gruesome images of the murder scene shown in court. “At the trial, Amanda never looked at them. Never. Raffaele looked every so often with one eye – icy, expressionless.” His jibe was described as “truly unfair” by Sollecito’s counsel, Donatella Donati. Her client, brought up by his father after his mother’s death, was simply “shy about showing his emotions”. It was followed by a defence onslaught on the evidence, with lawyers appearing to hint Knox and Sollecito were framed.But Donati came closer than anyone to making the charge explicit. She recalled that, after her client was arrested, his father had appeared on a show presented by one of Italy’s best-known TV journalists. Having heard of some of the alleged weaknesses in the police case, the presenter had remarked that, if such claims were true, “Someone will have to pay”. The following morning, said Donati, the police found at the scene of the crime Kercher’s bra clasp, which had lain there, apparently unnoticed, for more than six weeks. On examination the clasp was found to bear a trace of Sollecito’s DNA, though court-appointed experts reported in June that the evidence might have got there by contamination. Donati noted that the clasp also bore the DNA of two other men, and that neither of them was Guede. “So, who were those other men?”, she asked. Closing her address to the court, Donati said it was the defence that had gone after the truth in this case, even though under the Italian system that was the job of the prosecution. “Raffaele Sollecito has no fear of the truth”, she declared with the clear implication that his prosecutors might. Amanda Knox United States Meredith Kercher Italy Europe John Hooper guardian.co.uk
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