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ITALY-US-POLICE-MURDER
Italians pay homage to slain police officer
ROME, July 29, 2019 (BSS/AFP) – Thousands of people paid homage Sunday to
an Italian police officer whose stabbing death sparked a national outcry,
while the leaked photo of a blindfolded US suspect raised protests.
Flowers were laid in front of the station where officer Mario Rega
Cerciello was based, and mourners queued up to pay their last respects at a
chapel where his coffin was ahead of a funeral on Monday.
Cerciello, 35, was stabbed early Friday after recently returning from his
honeymoon. An Italian judge has charged two Americans, Christian Gabriel
Natale Hjorth and Elder Finnegan Lee, both 19, with aggravated homicide and
attempted extortion.
The police officer’s killing tapped into tensions in Italy over immigration
when the country’s far-right Interior Minister and Deputy Prime Minister
Matteo Salvini, responding to initial reports that the suspects were North
African, denounced the killers as “bastards”.
Cerciello’s funeral is to take place in his home town near Mount Vesuvius,
with Salvini and the country’s other deputy prime minister Luigi Di Maio due
to attend.
Meanwhile, a photo taken of one suspect blindfolded and handcuffed while
under questioning has been criticised, with Italian media saying the officer
responsible for placing the blindfold would be transferred to another post.
Giandomenico Caiazza, head of a lawyer’s union, said it might invalidate
the interrogation, which police say included a confession.
The suspects say they did not realize that Cerciello and a colleague were
police officers, but thought they were friends of an alleged drug dealer from
whom the pair had stolen a bag after what was supposed to be cocaine turned
out to be crushed aspirin, according to media reporters citing investigators.
The victim of the theft tipped off the police, but when two officers in
plain clothes went to arrest the two US tourists, one of them pulled a knife.
Police said surveillance cameras helped them track the pair to their four-
star hotel where they arrested them. Their bags were packed and they had been
planning to fly home that same evening.
Officers allegedly found a large knife hidden in the false ceiling of their
hotel room.
– Salvini posts photo –
Some Italian media underscored questions about the case, such as why an
alleged drug dealer would go to the police, why the paramilitary policemen
went to a scheduled meeting point in plain clothes without backup, and why
they did not identify themselves as police or draw their weapons.
Salvini was among those who posted the picture of the blindfolded suspect
on social media, with the comment: “The only victim was a man, a son, a
husband, a carabiniere (police officer), a servant of the country!”
Initial confusion that the culprits in the crime might be North African was
sparked after police released a statement saying Cerciello’s partner at the
scene had said the suspects were “probably African”.
“Apparently they’re not Italians,” said Salvini during a television
appearance Friday morning. “What a surprise!”
He called for “hard labour for life… for these bastards”.
The case has also reminded many Italians of a long-running affair that
involved Amanda Knox, a US student who was convicted and acquitted years
later of the murder of a flatmate in Perugia, central Italy in 2007.
BSS/AFP/MSY/0833 hrs