What's new

Welcome

If you already have an account, please login, but if you don't have one yet, you are more than welcome to freely join the community of lawyers around the world..

Register Log in
  • We don't have any responsibilities about the news being sent in this site. Legal News are automatically being collected from sources and submitted in this forum by feed readers. Source of each news is set in the news and a link to its source is always added.
    (Any News older than 21 days from its post time will be deleted automatically!)

Jurist Italy court stops trial of UN staffers in ambassador to Congo murder case

Status
Not open for further replies.
  • Thread starter
  • Staff
  • #1

Dadparvar

Staff member
Nov 11, 2016
10,595
0
6
An Italian judge ruled on Tuesday that two UN agency employees cannot be tried over the deaths of an Italian ambassador, his bodyguard and a driver in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), according to Rome daily newspaper Fatto Quotidiano. During a preliminary hearing, Judge Marisa Mosetti found that the UN agency employees have diplomatic immunity, prohibiting any Italian trial.

The case originated with the 2021 deaths of Italian ambassador to the DRC Luca Attanasio, his bodyguard Vittorio Iacovacci and driver Mustapha Milambo. The three were killed during a failed kidnapping attempt while underway to a World Food Program (WFP) project. In 2023, a local military court convicted the six men responsible for the attack, which occurred near Virunga National Park in the eastern part of the DRC. The court sentenced the six men to life in prison for their roles in the killings.

The Public Prosecutor’s Office in Rome had requested a trial for Rocco Leone and Mansour Luguru Rwagaza, two individuals who were the deputy chief of the WFP in DRC and a security officer, respectively, at the time of the attack. Accusing Leone and Rwagaza of negligence in organizing the trip, the prosecution sought to hold them responsible for Attanasio and his convoy’s deaths.

Mosetti asserted in her Tuesday verdict in Rome that, as employees of a UN agency, the two men enjoyed diplomatic immunity and are therefore shielded from criminal prosecution. A lawyer from the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation had weighed in on the issue of immunity during a January 24 hearing. Though there was some question as to proper procedure in communicating the immunity—which the Public Prosecutor’s Office sought to utilize in their arguments—the lawyer ultimately urged the court to find there was immunity for the two UN employees.

On Tuesday, Attanasio’s father, Salvatore Attanasio, told Fatto Quotidiano the court’s ruling was a bitter result announced just days before the third anniversary of his son’s killing. The Public Prosecutor’s Office in Rome has said that it intends to appeal.

The post Italy court stops trial of UN staffers in ambassador to Congo murder case appeared first on JURIST - News.

Continue reading...

Note: We don't have any responsibilities about this news. Its been posted here by Feed Reader and we had no controls and checking on it. And because News posted here will be deleted automatically after 21 days, threads are closed so that no one spend time to post and discuss here. You can always check the source and discuss in their site.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top