Dershowitz speaks out against the unjust legal system of

by on December 6, 2009 6

Italy:

Alan Dershowitz, a criminal defence lawyer and Harvard University law professor, said the Italian legal system "is not among Europe’s most distinguished".

The [Amanda Knox] verdict was "totally predictable" and the trial had been a "confirmation of the investigation", he said.

About Philip Weiss

Philip Weiss is Founder and Co-Editor of Mondoweiss.net.
Posted in Israel/Palestine

{ 6 comments... read them below or add one }

  1. DICKERSON3870 says:
    December 6, 2009 at 11:10 pm

    RE: “Dershowitz speaks out against the unjust legal system of Italy” – Weiss

    MY COMMENT: It looks like Berlusconi will be spending a lot of ‘denaro’ on criminal defense lawyers. Perhaps Dershowitz is already angling for his share of the lucre. Euros are considerably more desirable than U.S. dollars these days.

    SEE: “Mob witness links Berlusconi to Mafia bombings”, By Silvia Aloisi, Reuters, 12/04/09

    LINK – link to news.yahoo.com

    AND: “Thousands at rally hear calls for Berlusconi to quit”, The Irish Times, 12/07/09

    LINK – link to irishtimes.com

  2. Chaos4700 says:
    December 7, 2009 at 12:53 am

    What’s the matter? Not enough “administrative detention” for Dershowitz’s tastes? I’m sure this has absolutely nothing to do with Italy being pretty much the only country in the world thus far with the balls to actually prosecute the CIA operatives (careless and sloppy ones at that) when they violate sovereignty and international law.

  3. syvanen says:
    December 7, 2009 at 2:23 am

    Poor Dersh, wrong yet again. Amanda Knox and Rafeil are definitely guilty but not only that they really did commit the crime. What puzzled me initially about this case was how the US press could have been so completely wrong. Here is a pretty good answer for those interested:

    link to missrepresented.net

    Basically Amanda’s parents hired a PR firm that used all of its resources influencing American news sources (a bit of a waste given that the trial was in Italy). It is really an interesting story on its own and says something about how stories are covered. The PR firm presented the “whole” story to its news sources. Gave them a complete story. The other side didn’t speak English and it would take these press guys some real work digging out the real story. So they didn’t.

    I was sensitive to this kind of thing because I saw it happen once before, but with much more tragic consequences. Namely, in 1990 when Yugoslavia began to unravel there happened to be a large Croatian community in this country that was relatively prosperous and hired a PR firm to present their side in the resulting civil war against the Serbs. The Serbs had no expatriot community here, nor did Serb officials realize the importance for countering Croatian propaganda inside the US. We all know the result — lazy journalist simply reported PR given to them and so helped demonize the Serbs that by 1999, Clinton, needing a little distraction himself, gave the Serbians a 50 day treatment with Freedom Bombs.

    Israel actually, had a role in this story, but for once it was honorable. The reason there was a large expatriot Croatian community here is that 3 or 4 hundred thousand Croatians fled Yugoslavia at the end of the WWII because they had collaborated with the Nazis. Their party was called the Ustashe. They were welcomed into the US, after being rebranded as anticommunist freedom fighters. The Israelis were pissed off about this because the Ustashe ran a concentration camp that executed probably 30 or so thousand Jews as well as 200 or so thousand Serbs. The Serbs, on the other hand, ran one of the more successful underground escape routes that allowed thousands of Jewish refugees to escape to Palestine. Israel never betrayed Serbia during the nineties in recognition of this (it sure would have been nice if their lobby here in the US could have given them a hand though).

    So all is linked in interesting ways. Lobbyist Dersh backing two killers because he falls under the thrall of another lobbying group, which was doing just what a Croatian lobbying firm successfully did a generation back to the Serbs, but which Israel (diplomatically at least) tried to reverse.

    • David Green says:
      December 7, 2009 at 6:07 pm

      “Israel never betrayed Serbia during the nineties…”

      I’m not so sure. The Holocaust trope was freely used re Kosovo in the rhetoric that led up to the bombing in 1999. Israel likely sent medical personnel to the quite well-equipped facilities that Kosovars fled to before returning. As far as I know, Israel did nothing to challenge the usual narrative – Milosevic=Hitler.

  4. Chaos4700 says:
    December 7, 2009 at 3:02 am

    Basically Amanda’s parents hired a PR firm that used all of its resources influencing American news sources (a bit of a waste given that the trial was in Italy). It is really an interesting story on its own and says something about how stories are covered. The PR firm presented the “whole” story to its news sources. Gave them a complete story. The other side didn’t speak English and it would take these press guys some real work digging out the real story. So they didn’t.

    It’s like the the case is a total microcosm of how our media functions with regards to Israel’s crimes.

    Incidentally, intriguing part of the story which I believe I only caught on BBC World Service: a Congolese man was originally arrested and the other suspects tried to make it out as if he was the one solely responsible for the murder. It strikes me that if this had taken place in the US, the “blame the black man/immigrant” strategem might have let Knox and Sollecito off the hook. (You know… precedents.)

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