ITALY Part 3

ITALY Part 3

2000 – British MP Gerard Batten, of the UK Independence party, also became an acquaintance of Litvinenko, who was in his constituency. Before fleeing Russia in 2000, Litvinenko spoke to Colonel General Anatolly Trofimov, a former deputy chief of the FSB. Trofimov told Litvinenko, don’t go to Italy, there are many KGB agents there, among the politicians. Romano Prodi, then PM of Italy, and foreign head of the EC, is our man there, he said, Trofimov and his wife were murdered in Moscow in 2005. (Russia’s new cold war 27 November 2006 Neil MacKay).

25 September 2000 – Livia Turco, Italy’s social affairs minister, pushed to make sex slavery legal and encourage women to form left wing coops. (Internet timeline).

2001 – Countering terrorism through international cooperation. Alex Schmid UN Rome. International scientific and professional advisory council of the UN and the UN terrorism prevention branch.

16 April 2002 – Afghanistan’s former King Mohammad Zaher Shah returns to Kabul after 24 years of exile in Italy.

19 November 2002 – Italian newspapers reported that the ‘Ndrangheta, or Calabrin version of the Sicilian mafia, got 3% of the multimillion dollar contracts for work on highways through the area. (AP 11/20/02 timeline internet).

2003 – Nicolo Pollari, head of SISMI, Italy’s secret service, was accused of helping the CIA kidnap a terrorist suspect in 2003 in Milan. They were also accused of paying journalists to plant stories and spy on magistrates. Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr was grabbed of a Milan street and driven to a US airbase in northern Italy. Then flown to Egypt where he says he was tortured. (21 November 2006 CNN Reuters).

2003 – Scaramella moved from environment expert to KGB specialist, when he was appointed as a consultant to the Mitrokhin commission. It was that work which put him in contact with Litvinenko. (27 November 2006. The Mail on Sunday UK).

2003 – Mafia brotherhoods. Organised crime Italian style. Letizia Paoli. Oxford university press.

2003 – Reversible destiny, mafia, anti-mafia and the struggle for Palermo. Jane C Schneider. Peter T Schneider. University of California press.

February 2003 – Abu Omar aka Osama Nasr was under surveillance by Italy’s special branch police force, the Digos, on suspicion of recruiting terrorists. CIA Milan chief was Robert Seldon Lady. The Italian government had given permission for the CIA mission and wiretapping is common in Italy. Police and spies tap 100,000 phones every year. Tracing the phone of Marco Mancini, SISMI’s number two. On 5 July 2006 police raided the apartment on via Naziamah in Rome. They found a SISMI spy with dossiers on enemies of the Berlisconi government. (27 July 2006 Patrick Radden Keefe).

6 March 2003 – Italian police raided a house in Palermo and captured Salvatore Rinella, a top mafia boss aged 49. (AP 3/7/03 internet).

2004 – The Bilderbergers met at the five star grand hotel des Iles Borromees in Stresa Italy. There were angry protests about the occupation of Iraq by American troops. European opposition to US military action. The Bilderbergers said the UN should be given a greater role in future outbreaks of violence. (Who really runs the world ©2005 UK T Burnett & A Games).

The Mail on Sunday said that in June 2005 Italian police launched an investigation into a plot, to smuggle uranium from the Soviet Union into Italy, after being tipped off by Scaramella. A tip off from Litvinenko helped foil an assassination attempt in 2005 on Paolo Guzzanti, an Italian senator who headed the Mitrokhin inquiry. In 2004 Scaramella led an investigation on the illegal dumping of nuclear waste by the mafia in an Italian lake. (The Mail on Sunday 27 November 2006,UK).

2004 – Cosa Nostra. A history of the Sicilian mafia. John Dickie. Sicilian mafia history.

28 January 2004 – Italian police busted an international drug smuggling ring. They arrested more than 150 people and seized more than five tons of cocaine. (AP 1/28/04 & timelines internet).

24 February 2004 –A letter bomb campaign across Europe that originated in Italy. Italian police said terrorism was not involved in a letter bomb that exploded in Perugia this week and they arrested a man in his 40’s.

19 April 2004 – Pierluigi Vigna, Italy’s national anti-mafia prosecutor said, that Italian mafia and Islamic terrorists had links in arms and drug trafficking. (AP 4/20/094 timeline internet).

11 June 2004 – In Palermo Sicily a court convicted 30 top Sicilian mafia to life in jail, after a ten year trial covering 77 murders. (AP 6/12/04 timeline internet).

9 August 2004 – Italy takes heat as racist voices rise. Anti-Islamic book by an Italian journalist sold half a million copies in hours last week. High beam research. Christian science monitor.

23 August 2004 – al-Qaeda threatens attacks in Italy and across Europe. A group linked to al-Qaeda issued another threat, to attack targets in Italy and across Europe.  After Rome ignored an ultimatum to leave Iraq. Italian PM was Silvio Berlisconi. We target all of Europe, a statement signed by the Abu Hafs al-Masri brigades al-Qaeda organisation, posted on an Islamic website, expiry on 15 July 2004, of the truce offer by bin Laden. In a statement on 15 August 2004 the group threatened to launch attacks throughout Italy and target Berlisconi. Italy has 3,000 troops in Iraq.

24 August 2004 – Italy says it has no intention of withdrawing its 3,000 troops from Iraq. Demands were made from kidnappers who seized an Italian journalist. The government says it planned to secure the released of the journalist, Enzo Baldoni, but the Italian presence in Iraq would continue. PM Silvio Berlusconi’s office said, a group called the Islamic army in Iraq said, its holding the journalist Enzo Baldoni, Diario magazine driver was found dead near Najafi. He had been  missing since 19 August 2004. (BBC UK).