Cult theory in Italy murder probe
Last Updated: Friday, 23 January, 2004, 17:59 GMT
Italian police are looking at the theory that Satanists may have been behind a series of gruesome murders.
They believe a cult may have ordered the killing of eight couples between 1968 and 1985 and kept some body parts.
Farm worker Pietro Pacciani, dubbed the Monster of Florence, was convicted of the crimes in 1994 but later released on the basis of flaws in the evidence.
Following new evidence, a pharmacist and three other Florentine professionals are being questioned.
Witness reports of female genitalia and body parts in the fridge of a Tuscan villa linked to a suspected Satanist led police to reopen the case.
The villa had been rented by a doctor thought to have drowned in a lake in 1985 according to Reuters news agency.
Rituals
The man, who police now think was murdered, is suspected of having been part of a Satanic group who ordered Pacciani and two accomplices to carry out the killings.
“The eight double homicides were carried out according to a criminal plan on two levels,” a judicial source told Reuters.
“The execution was entrusted to [Pacciani and his friends] but a group of people who celebrated rituals and black magic put the arms in their hands.”
Pacciani died in 1998, two years after his release on appeal and while he was facing a retrial, whilst the two other men were convicted of aiding him
The Guardian newspaper says two previous independent investigations suggested an occult link to the murders.
The victims were shot during romantic trysts in the Tuscan countryside and many suffered sexual mutilations.
‘Hannibal’
Police investigating the 60-year-old pharmacist seized pornographic material from his home.
His lawyer told the Guardian he did not believe his client had anything to do with the killings.
A dermatologist, a businessman and a lawyer from Florence were also being questioned.
The trial of Pacciani, who was given 16 life sentences, was attended by Silence of the Lambs author Thomas Harris who was fascinated by the case.
The fruits of his research in the Chianti region appear in Hannibal, with references to “Il Mostro”.
Pacciani died in 1998 at the age of 73 before a retrial.
Italian ‘Beasts of Satan’ jailed
Last Updated: Tuesday, 22 February, 2005, 17:31 GMT
The Italian mastermind of three gruesome “satanic” murders has been sentenced to 30 years in prison.
A second member of the cult involved in the murders received a 16-year term, while a third man was acquitted.
The killings, which shocked Italy, were carried out by a heavy metal band calling itself the Beasts of Satan.
The three victims were a woman shot and then buried alive in 2004 and a teenage couple, who were murdered six years earlier.
Andrea Volpe, the leader of the heavy metal group and the main culprit in the murders, has been handed down a longer prison sentence than expected.
His prosecutors had asked for 20 years on the grounds that had cooperated with investigators and shown remorse.
Pietro Guerrieri is to serve the 16-year term.
Buried alive
“Today justice rewarded me”, said Michele Tollis, the father of Fabio, who was only 16 when he was killed and buried along with his 19-year-old girlfriend Chiara in a forest not far from Milan.
But Chiara’s mother, Lina Marino, was outraged at the punishment, which she considered too lenient.
“They are murderers. It’s not fair,” she said.
The 1998 murders were carried out as part of drug fuelled rituals involving sex and heavy metal music.
The couple, themselves members of the heavy metal band, were killed in woods northeast of Milan and then buried next to each other.
Volpe was also found guilty of the 2004 murder of his own girlfriend, 27-year-old Mariangela Pezzotta, who was shot and buried alive in a forest.
It was the discovery of her body that helped investigators solve the 1998 case.
A third defendant was acquitted at the end of the fast-track trial on Tuesday, but five more members of the cult are due to go to trial in June.
Project Paperclip: Dark side of the Moon
Last Updated: Monday, 21 November 2005, 11:13 GMT
Sixty years ago the US hired Nazi scientists to lead pioneering projects, such as the race to conquer space. These men provided the US with cutting-edge technology which still leads the way today, but at a cost.
The end of World War II saw an intense scramble for Nazi Germany’s many technological secrets. The Allies vied to plunder as much equipment and expertise as possible from the rubble of the Thousand Year Reich for themselves, while preventing others from doing the same.
The range of Germany’s technical achievement astounded Allied scientific intelligence experts accompanying the invading forces in 1945.
Supersonic rockets, nerve gas, jet aircraft, guided missiles, stealth technology and hardened armour were just some of the groundbreaking technologies developed in Nazi laboratories, workshops and factories, even as Germany was losing the war.
And it was the US and the Soviet Union which, in the first days of the Cold War, found themselves in a race against time to uncover Hitler’s scientific secrets.
In May 1945, Stalin’s legions secured the atomic research labs at the prestigious Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in the suburbs of Berlin, giving their master the kernel of what would become the vast Soviet nuclear arsenal.
US forces removed V-2 missiles from the vast Nordhausen complex, built under the Harz Mountains in central Germany, just before the Soviets took over the factory, in what would become their area of occupation. And the team which had built the V-2, led by Wernher von Braun, also fell into American hands.
Crimes
Shortly afterwards Major-General Hugh Knerr, deputy commander of the US Air Force in Europe, wrote: “Occupation of German scientific and industrial establishments has revealed the fact that we have been alarmingly backward in many fields of research.
“If we do not take the opportunity to seize the apparatus and the brains that developed it and put the combination back to work promptly, we will remain several years behind while we attempt to cover a field already exploited.”
Thus began Project Paperclip, the US operation which saw von Braun and more than 700 others spirited out of Germany from under the noses of the US’s allies. Its aim was simple: “To exploit German scientists for American research and to deny these intellectual resources to the Soviet Union.”
Events moved rapidly. President Truman authorised Paperclip in August 1945 and, on 18 November, the first Germans reached America.
There was, though, one major problem. Truman had expressly ordered that anyone found “to have been a member of the Nazi party and more than a nominal participant in its activities, or an active supporter of Nazism militarism” would be excluded.
Under this criterion even von Braun himself, the man who masterminded the Moon shots, would have been ineligible to serve the US. A member of numerous Nazi organisations, he also held rank in the SS. His initial intelligence file described him as “a security risk”.
And von Braun’s associates included:
- Arthur Rudolph, chief operations director at Nordhausen, where 20,000 slave labourers died producing V-2 missiles. Led the team which built the Saturn V rocket. Described as “100 per cent Nazi, dangerous type”.
- Kurt Debus, rocket launch specialist, another SS officer. His report stated: “He should be interned as a menace to the security of the Allied Forces.”
- Hubertus Strughold, later called “the father of space medicine”, designed Nasa’s on-board life-support systems. Some of his subordinates conducted human “experiments” at Dachau and Auschwitz, where inmates were frozen and put into low-pressure chambers, often dying in the process.
All of these men were cleared to work for the US, their alleged crimes covered up and their backgrounds bleached by a military which saw winning the Cold War, and not upholding justice, as its first priority.
And the paperclip which secured their new details in their personnel files gave the whole operation its name. Sixty years on, the legacy of Paperclip remains as vital as ever.
With its radar-absorbing carbon impregnated plywood skin and swept-back single wing, the 1944 Horten Ho 229 was arguably the first stealth aircraft.
The US military made one available to Northrop Aviation, the company which would produce the $2bn B-2 Stealth bomber – to all intents and purposes a modern clone of the Horten – a generation later.
Cruise missiles are still based on the design of the V-1 missile and the scramjets powering Nasa’s state-of-the-art X-43 hypersonic aircraft owe much to German jet pioneers.
Added to this, the large number of still-secret Paperclip documents has led many people, including Nick Cook, Aerospace Consultant at Jane’s Defence Weekly, to speculate that the US may have developed even more advanced Nazi technology, including anti-gravity devices, a potential source of vast amounts of free energy.
Cook says that such technology “could be so destructive that it would endanger world peace and the US decided to keep it secret for a long time”.
But, while celebrating the undoubted success of Project Paperclip, many will prefer to remember the thousands who died to send mankind into space.
Canada probes computer ’spying’
Friday, 25 August, 2000, 23:15 GMT 00:15 UK
Police in Canada say they’re investigating whether foreign spies used rigged computer software to infiltrate the country’s secret service.
A spokesman for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in Ottawa told the BBC an investigation was under way, but there was no evidence that national security had been compromised.
On Friday, a Canadian newspaper, the Toronto Star, said Israeli and United States spies had gained access to classified information kept by the Canadian intelligence service using a computer program called Promis.
Allegations that the software was deliberately changed in order to allow the Americans and the Israelis undetected access were never proven.
From the newsroom of the BBC World Service
Fears over Haiti child ‘abuse’
Last Updated: Thursday, 30 November 2006, 13:35 GMT
A BBC investigation commissioned as part of Generation Next – a week of programmes focusing on people under 18 – has uncovered fresh allegations of the sexual abuse of children by United Nations peacekeepers. Mike Williams reports from Port au Prince, Haiti.
The heavily armoured United Nations patrol rolls through the dusty streets of Cite Soleil – the most dangerous and deprived part of a very dangerous and deprived country.
UN peacekeepers crouch low in the turrets of the armoured cars, their rifles tracking the rooftops and alleyways. They come under fire every day in this part of the capital, Port au Prince.
The week before I arrived, two of the peacekeepers were killed there.
Exploitation
There are about 9000 peacekeepers in the UN mission to Haiti, most of them soldiers who come from 19 different nations. Most of them have come to help. They work hard in dangerous conditions to bring security and aid to the desperate people.
But there are some peacekeepers who are willing to use their advantages to exploit some of the most vulnerable people in this troubled society. I spoke to a 14-year-old girl who told of the peacekeeper who offered her jelly, sweets and a few dollars for sex with her and her friend – a child of just 11 years.
Half of the population of Haiti struggle to survive on just a dollar a day and the streets are filled with people selling whatever they can to raise a little cash. At nighttime, those who have nothing to sell, sell themselves.
Among the UN soldiers and civilians, they can find willing buyers. One UN official told me that a great many of the girls who work the streets are children and, in the dark streets of the capital Port-au-Prince, we watched UN officials picking up young prostitutes and driving off with them.
‘Betrayal’
Sarah Martin, of Refugees International, has studied the problem in UN missions across the world.
“To prey upon the very populations that you are sent to protect is one of the worst forms of violation and betrayal that there is,” she says.
Sarah (not her real name) is a fragile looking girl of 16. She says that two years ago, she was raped by a Brazilian soldier serving with the UN mission there.
She stared at the ground while we talked and, almost in a whisper, she explained what happened: “He held me down by the arms and held both my wrists, twisting them back and we struggled together. And then he raped me.”
Her mother cried while she recalled that day: “When I found her I didn’t recognise my own child,” she says. “She had the face of a dead person – I started to cry out, she couldn’t tell me what had happened.”
The family have been seeking justice from the United Nations but officials at the local UN mission say that justice was done. Three internal inquiries found there was insufficient evidence against the man and he was sent back to his unit in Brazil.
Immunity
Soldiers serving with the UN have immunity from local laws and it’s up to their home countries to discipline them. More often than not, they’re simply repatriated and the UN has little information about what, if anything, happens to them then.
“The UN has to be absolutely vigilant that those troops that are conducting these practices are dismissed,” says Anna Jefferys of Save The Children. “It has to ensure that those member states that are deploying these troops are somehow shamed within the UN system so that the stigma becomes too big to do it again.”
The UN is holding a conference in New York on Monday 4 December, at which officials will hear from victims, NGO workers and researchers in the field.
The assistant secretary-general for peacekeeping operations, Jane Holl Lute, says they need find ways to control the exploitation and she admits that the organisation has a very serious problem.
“My operating presumption that this is either an ongoing or potential problem in every single one of our missions,” she says.
“All of our missions are in areas that are economically deprived, where societies have been torn by conflict and war, where habits like prostitution of very young children is seen as a matter of course.
“We need to bring every resource we can to bear to make that not the case when a peacekeeping mission is in place.”
Ms Lute said the UN’s inability to impose punishments was a shortcoming in the system and she admitted that the organisation does not have a system of justice that everyone would recognise as fair and equitable.
Sarah, the girl who claims she was raped by a peacekeeper would probably agree.
You can listen to this programme on the World Service on Thursday 30 November at 20.05 GMT.
Child porn arrests made in Spain
Last Updated: Sunday, 15 July 2007, 16:23 GMT 17:23 UK
Sixty-six people have been arrested in Spain in an operation against child pornography, police say.
Officials said computers containing 48m child pornography images and videos had been seized in the operation, which was co-ordinated by Interpol. Those arrested reportedly include doctors, lawyers and teachers.
Officers are now trying to establish whether any of the suspects have themselves committed child abuse acts.
The investigation began in September after German police told Spanish police about several child-sex internet forums being accessed by individuals in Spain.
Under Operation Penalty, which was co-ordinated by Interpol, Spanish police monitored 5,000 downloads of material from servers based in Germany.
The investigation identified 85 suspects, most of whom are now in custody.
Police said that one of those arrested possessed the largest child pornography haul ever found on one person, a collection which needed 21 separate hard discs to house it.
The operation was so large that it involved 300 specialist agents and covered 40 of Spain’s 57 provinces.
Investigating child abuse in Ireland
Saturday, 18 September, 1999, 09:33 GMT 10:33 UK
The Republic of Ireland has been shocked by a torrent of child abuse allegations in recent years and soon an independent commission will investigate what really went on the country’s children’s homes. The Christian Brothers religious order, which has been accused of mistreating children in its care, speaks exclusively to Branwen Jeffreys of the BBC Radio 4 programme Broadcasting House.
In a hired hall in Coventry, a small crowd stands to remember their school fellows with a minute’s silence. This disparate group of men and women are here to share not fond memories but the recollection of an upbringing marred by sexual abuse and neglect. The common thread, a childhood spent in Irish homes, orphanages and borstal style schools. After decades of silence and denial Ireland is facing up to a shameful and cruel mistreatment of thousands of children despatched into care by the courts.
‘Abuse, deprivation and gross injustice’
As more people have come forward to talk about their experiences the numbers attending these meetings have grown. The support group Survivors of Child Abuse (SOCA) now claims 1,500 members in Britain. It is one small part of a diaspora now pinning their hopes on an independent commission about to begin work in Ireland.
“It’s vital for justice, for those who went through the system. We hope our concerns are listened to, after the failure by Ireland to address the issues of abuse, deprivation and gross injustice,” says Patrick Walsh from SOCA.
With other support groups they are lobbying the commission, which has just opened its offices in Dublin. It is the fulfilment of a promise by Bertie Ahern, the Irish Taoiseach, who earlier this year apologised to those who had been abused in institutions paid for by the state, but often run by religious orders.
In recent years the trickle of allegations that began in the 1980s has turned into a torrent. The Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse is an unprecedented attempt to establish the scale of mistreatment of several generations. The panel of three independent experts is expected to spend a couple of years piecing together the story of a system which it’s now recognised was often brutal and cruel.
‘It was horrendous’
In north Dublin, the main building of what was Artane industrial school towers over the new housing estate built around it. Now an ordinary school, Artane was the largest borstal style school run by the Christian Brothers.
Its name is now associated with a catalogue of mistreatment as former pupils have come forward to talk about its harsh regime. Michael O’Brien was among the first to talk publicly about his experiences at a time when suggesting abuse in a Catholic institution was still a taboo.
Sixteen years later he is waiting to retell it to the commission. “I was invisible, that’s how I used to think of myself. It helped me to cope.”
In his Dublin flat he recalls his years in Artane in the 1960s, where he claims sexual abuse by several Christian Brothers began when he was 11.
“A brother might go through the sexual act, which could involve anything from pet sex right up to rape and then blame you the child for tempting him into the situation, taking it out on you, punching or using his leather strap. It was horrendous.”
His allegations are among 250 complaints being investigated by a special team of the Irish police.
The Christian Brothers have spoken rarely about the allegations, but with the commission beginning its work they agreed to an interview at the offices of their PR company.
Did Brother Michael Murray recognise the vivid descriptions of former pupils of cruel and abusive institutions?
Pausing carefully to weigh his words he told me it was not recognised by some of the brothers who worked in the industrial schools.
“I have read victim impact reports and I couldn’t deny that serious damage has been done to a large number of people.” But Brother Michael cannot explain why abuse went unchecked.
“It’s one of the puzzles, how could it go on for so long? It also leads us to believe it wasn’t happening at the scale that’s been said.”
The order, which also apologised last year, is anxious to stress that it was part of a system which involved the government departments of education and justice.
In the next few weeks the Irish Government will announce what powers will be agreed with the commission.
If it is to investigate how much was known within the religious orders and by civil servants and ministers, many believe it should have the power to compel witnesses to attend and to demand access to documents.
But Education Minister Michael Martin believes its primary task must be to listen.
“I think there will be an issue about the balance between the therapeutic and investigative side, but on balance I favour the emphasis on the therapeutic. We are determined to give the commission the powers it needs to do the job it needs to do.”
