The Tribunal of Ministers has started
investigating the case of Libyan judicial police chief Osama
Almasri, who was released on a technicality and flown back home
on a secret services plane two days after his January 19 arrest
by Italian authorities on an International Criminal Court (ICC)
warrant on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Daily newspapers Corriere della Sera and Repubblica reported on
Wednesday that the tribunal has requested a series of documents
from the justice ministry, Rome's appeals court, which ordered
Almasri's release on a technicality, and the State attorney's
office at the appeals tribunal.
The documents are necessary to probe what happened between the
arrest on an ICC warrant of the Libyan general at a hotel in
Turin at dawn on January 19 and his return to Tripoli on a State
flight following his release by the appeals court in Rome on
January 21.
The relase was ordered after Justice Minister Nordio did not
respond to the tribunal's request to back the arrest.
Premier Giorgia Meloni, Justice Minister Carlo Nordio - over his
alleged refusal to perform public acts - Interior Minister
Matteo Piantedosi and Cabinet Undersecretary with the
intelligence brief Alfredo Mantovano are under investigation in
the case after attorney Luigi Li Gotti filed a criminal
complaint against them.
Li Gotti, a former centre-left justice undersecretary and
earlier a neo-Fascist party member, filed the complaint to the
State Attorney's Office in Rome on presumed charges of aiding
and abetting and embezzlement, due to the use of a secret
services flight to take Almasri back to Libya.
The complaint was notified to the government officials and
transmitted by Rome chief prosecutor Francesco Lo Voi to the
Tribunal of Ministers under a constitutional law that provides
for activities of investigation involving cabinet members to be
undertaken by the special court and not by State attorneys.
The court documents set to be examined by the Tribunal of
Ministers include communications between the court and the
justice ministry, the Italian embassy in the Netherlands and the
ministry and a draft document prepared by justice ministry
officials which was meant to keep the Libyan general in prison
but was never delivered to the judges who needed to rule on his
detention.
Discussing the controversial technicality that led to Almasri's
release during a report to Parliament on the case earlier this
month, Nordio said the ICC arrest warrant was faulty, which made
it impossible for him to immediately respond to the request
issued by Rome's appeals court ahead of its decision on whether
to validate Almasri's detention or release him.
The justice ministry handles all relations with The Hague-based
court.
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