Experts on Wednesday said
Italian SWAT team officer Samuele Donatoni was killed not by
friendly fire but by kidnappers during a failed 1997 hostage
rescue operation.
The deceased took fire from a Kalashnikov and not from a
police-issue Beretta, the experts said.
Donatoni, 32, was shot dead on the Rome-L'Aquila highway on
the night of October 17, 1997, during a failed bid to free
textiles magnate Giuseppe Soffiantini, who had been kidnapped
for ransom by a gang in June that year.
Donatoni's fellow agents Stefano Miscali and Claudio
Sorrentino said kidnapper Mario Moro was responsible for the
officer's killing.
Fellow gangster Giovanni Farina was captured in Australia
in 1998. He was sentenced to 28 years for his role in the
kidnapping, but was acquitted in 2005 of being an accessory to
the murder of the Italian agent: the court found Donatoni was
hit by friendly fire, and the two surviving officers were
indicted for manslaughter and slander for falsely accusing the
kidnapper.
The manslaughter charge had timed out, and today's expert
report was issued for the defence because the two officers are
still fighting the remaining slander charge.
Donatoni, Miscali and Sorrentino were from the Central
Operative Security Nucleus (NOCS, in its Italian acronym),
Italy's state police SWAT team.
Soffiantini, who was eventually freed after the payment
of a $3 million ransom, was held for 237 days, during which
two pieces of his ears were sent in with ransom demands.
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