“It’s not true that he acted alone.” And “there are many things you have to say”. Sources close to the Minister of Justice explain that he won’t end up in the meat grinder, and that tomorrow in the Chamber he will be on the counterattack. Carlo Nordio will go to the courtroom, and most likely – from what is announced – he will remove more than a pebble from his shoe. There is no need for the Minister of Justice to pass as the sole scapegoat for the sensational story of Artem Uss’s escape from Italy, and at 2 pm, in the urgent government report, he will try to explain it.
Uss was arrested on October 17 at Malpensa and had spent a few months in prison before obtaining house arrest in Basiglio, in the Milan area, from which he fled on March 22. The US Department of Justice and – says Nordio – also the Italian Ministry of Justice had asked for the prison measure to be maintained. Which the Court of Appeal strongly denies. Who is right? And there are also other actors in this dark story?
What will Nordio say? Impossible to predict with certainty, he is working on the speech but he counts on having several arrows he can use. He will argue that the Ministry of Justice has initiated disciplinary proceedings against the judges of the Milan Court of Appeal, for “grave and inexcusable negligence”, for having decided to grant house arrest with an electronic bracelet on November 25, 2022 to the Russian trafficker Uss, accused in the US of illegal purchase of weapons components, illegal purchase of Venezuelan oil under sanctions and money laundering. Uss, as is known, eventually escaped. For Nordio, the three judges of the Court of Appeal decided on house arrest “without taking into consideration” circumstances which, indicated in the opinion of the Milan Attorney General’s Office, which was against the house arrest, led to a preference for prison. And if it is true that the letter from the Americans arrived in Milan only twenty days later, Via Arenula had already warned of the risks on 19 October.
There is more. It is not clear whether how much of Nordio’s strategy (frontal attack, at least by the judges) is fully embraced by Palazzo Chigi, but it appears equally certain – according to sources consulted by The print – that even within the executive there are those who do not exonerate the services at all, or rather, do not believe the thesis leaked by the entire sector: that is, since the CIA had not let the Italian apparatus know, formally or informally, a more active supervision of our services on the Russian trafficker at risk of fleeing was unthinkable. Could the services – someone also asks in the government – could they not have known of the danger of Uss, very clear from all the FBI papers? Those cards that were then told by The print. In short, Atlanticists and – shall we say – pro-Russian coexist largely within our government.
Be that as it may, in via Arenula they seem intent on saying everything they have to say, after days after the ministers have listened to all kinds of accusations and leaked papers against the ministry’s work. On this, there is bitterness and the sense of having suffered an injustice, because Nordio believes he has never endorsed the house arrest. And he holds the magistrates responsible for “failing to evaluate” a series of elements that clearly made it clear “the high and concrete risk of escape”. Uss could be stopped. And there are many who have not contributed to it.