JUDGES WHO REFUSE TO EXPRESS THEMSELVES ABOUT JURISDICTION ARE REJECTED.
On March 13th, an animated hearing took place before the Court of Trieste. It is a very unique proceeding.
Together with journalist Paolo G. Parovel, director of fearless investigative newspaper “La Voce di Trieste”, we stand accused of an opinion crime.
The complainant is Ms. Rosa Filippini, president of the Italian Friends of the Earth (Amici della Terra Italia). Mr. Parovel and I were part of that environmental group some time ago.
Now we are charged with offending Ms. Filippini and the FoE – Italy for reacting to their denigratory campaign against us. This is the indictment:
“Giurastante Roberto accused of the crime at art. 595 3 of the Criminal Code, for offending the name of Filippini Rosa and of Association Amici della Terra because, with a press release, declared as follows: “because all of our investigations, complaints, and legal action proved grounded, let us put into question why the national directors of this association are so badly trying to get rid of us, given that this would only favor powerful politicians and entrepreneurs…”.
That’s it. This is is all it takes to end up before Court in the Italian system.
This indictment shows the situation of the time (2006) very well. The Trieste FoE, with its actions for legality, was a thorn in the side of the local system of corruption, which in Trieste enjoys special immunities: the group had to go. And it did go. The national FoE expelled the group. Obviously, the Italian FoE accompanied our expulsion with criminal and civil complaints.
This trial is one of those left from that time. The Italian FoE was unable to stop us: we continued our actions for the environment thanks to the new organizations Greenaction and Alpe Adria Green, but this has not stopped the trials.
This is a “leftover” trial.
During the first hearing, on December 14th, 2011, I opened QuestionTrieste before Court. The 1947 Italian Peace Treaty makes Trieste independent; Italian judges here can only act exercising the jurisdiction of the provisional Italian Government.
Judge Paolo Vascotto rejected by exception providing no legal reason. His one-liner? “Italian sovereignty over Trieste was undisputed”.
I rejected the judge, and the trial was suspended.
The ball was now in the Court of Appeal’s… court.
The Court of Appeal declared the rejection of judge Vascotto ungrounded, failed to identify the source of its jurisdiction, and ordered me to pay a 1,500 EUR fee
I then impugned the Court of Appeal’s decision before the Italian Court of Cassation. The Cassation declared my appeal inadmissible. And added a 1,000 EUR fee to the Court of Appeal’s. The trial was re-assigned to Judge Vascotto, and this is how we get here.
Here is the March 13th, 2013 hearing.
Before the trial’s opening, I lodged a new exception of jurisdiction.
This time I reminded the Court that art. 20 of the Italian Code of Criminal Procedure establishes that matters of jurisdiction mandate a judgment. But the judge rejected my exception… again, for the same (lack of) reasons as before.
Some never-ending cycle we have here. No judge wants to discuss “Question Trieste”. It is not easy ruling that the 1947 Treaty of Peace has “expired”. That Treaty, at art. 21.2, rules that Trieste is independent from Italy. But if the Treaty expires, what about the 1954 MoU that implements it? It is under this act that the local Italian authorities have jurisdiction over Trieste after all.
I once again rejected the judge, requesting the trial be suspended and all documentation sent to the Italian Ministries of Justice and of Foreign Affairs. The documentation is now before the Court of Appeal… which may be unaware of it, but is legally a Court of the Free Territory of Trieste.
I wrote about it HERE.
And here we go again. When is this simulation of sovereignty ending?
Tratto dal blog “Ambiente e Legalità” di Roberto Giurastante