Rome prosecutors have opned a
new probe into the 1994 murders in Mogadishu of Italian TV
reporter Ilaria Alpi and her cameraman Miran Hrovatin, judicial
sources said Friday.
The probe concerns suspected anomalies linked to the handling
of a witness who proved to be false, Ahmed Ali Rage, aka Gelle -
anomalies highlighted by a Perugia appeals court which in
October acquitted the sole defendant, Somali Hasci Omar Hassan,
after he spent 16 years in jail.
On October 19 the Perugia court quashed Hassan's conviction
after prosecutor Dario Razzi told the court Hassan "did not
commit" the crime.
He was the only person convicted of the murders.
Alpi, 32, and Hrovatin, 45, were ambushed and shot in their
jeep in Mogadishu by a seven-man commando on March 20, 1994.
In 2015 Ahmed Ali Rage, who was also known as Gelle and
who was a key witness for the prosecution in the trial that led
to the conviction, said that Hassan was "innocent".
Last June Rage told a new trial that he "never told anyone"
Hassan was part of the murder commando. Hassan was released into
the custody of social services in 2015 with 10 years to go on
his 26-year sentence.
"Thank God it's over," said Hassan at the time.
"Now I have to find my family because I have not seem them
for 19 years and I need documents urgently to be able to do so.
"They ruined me. But thanks to God, to the help of
journalists and to these judges today, I have been freed".
Alpi's mother Luciana, who backed Hassan's battle against
the miscarriage of justice, said that she was "happy" Hassan had
been cleared, but added that she was "bitter and depressed" that
the real culprits had not been brought to justice.
"It's as if she and Miran Hrovatin died of the heat in
Mogadishu," Luciana Alpi told ANSA. "We don't have the truth and
I don't think we ever will".
Photos taken of the dead body of Alpi, who worked for
public broadcaster RAI's third channel Rai3, and a medical
report on the deaths, along with other key evidence including
Alpi's notes, camera and video cassettes, mysteriously went
missing on the journey back from Africa to Italy, fuelling
suspicions of a cover-up.
Speaking to Rai3, Rage in February 2015 claimed that he was
asked to testify against Hassan.
"I did not see who fired the shots," he reportedly said.
According to the Italian diplomat who investigated the case
in Somalia, former ambassador Giuseppe Cassini, the driver who
acted as a key witness for the prosecution was "an unreliable
individual who would do anything to survive".
Initially, it was thought that the journalist was murdered
in revenge for clashes which had broken out between the militias
of Somalia's warlords and Italian peacekeepers.
But a 1999 book by Alpi's parents called The Execution
alleged that Alpi and Hrovatin were killed to stop them
revealing what they knew about an international arms and
toxic-waste ring implicating high-level political, military and
economic figures in both countries.
The book accuses the Italian secret services of playing a
major role in this ring.
Hassan, who travelled to Italy in 1998 to give evidence in
a probe into brutality by Italian soldiers, was acquitted of
involvement in the two murders at the end of a first trial in
July 1999.
But he was found guilty by an appeals court in 2000 and
sentenced to life in prison.
Italy's supreme Cassation Court upheld the guilty verdict
in October 2001 but reduced the sentence from life to 26 years
because it said the crimes were not premeditated.
Hassan's lawyers said he was not in Mogadishu at the time
of the killing and was tricked into coming to Italy.
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