CONG TAKING IT OUT ON MARINES: ITALIAN MEDIA
Monday, 03 February 2014 | PNS | New Delhi
Italian newspapers on Saturday linked talks in India to slap charges of death penalty on two Italian marines undergoing trials here to the revelation made by a middleman in AgustaWestland that Congress president Sonia Gandhi’s close aides might have been approached to clinch the deal.
According to Tempo, Libero and IL Fatto, all newspapers, a day after the controversial letter of middleman Christian Michel surfaced in the Italian court, India’s Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde started talking about imposing death penalty charges on the two Italian marines.
The reports titled The Revenge of India — The death penalty is back with hearing of Finmeccanica” in Tempo, and “Agusta Helicopters, Italian bribes to Indian politicians in the background of the marines case in IL Fatto accused the Indian Government of playing with the lives of Italian Navy’s marines.
The newspapers pointed out when the controversial documents linking Indian politicians to the chopper deal were produced by the prosecutors in the Italian court on January 9, “the legal representatives of the Indian Government present at the hearing exploded.”
The Italian papers pointed out that the next day onwards, the Indian Government, especially Home Minister Shinde, started talking about imposition of death penalty on the Italian marines charged for the killing of two fishermen off the Kerala coast last year.
“The very next day a news appears in the Indian newspapers that leaves the families of rifle men, imprisoned in India for two years, astonished: ‘The decision whether or not to apply the death penalty will be assessed by the Indian Government within two or three day’. This was leaked that day by the Minister of India, Sushilkumar Shinde,” reports IL Fatto.
Another Italian newspaper, Libero, too links the “sudden change of scenery” due to the developments in the Italian court. The newspaper quoted the previous statements of Foreign Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid, ruling out the imposition of death sentences on marines.
“There is a weaving of dates of suspicion and fear that the fate of two marines may be linked to the outcomes of the process on the 30 million Euro bribe paid by Finmeccanica (the manufactures of AgustaWestland chopper) to politicians in India.
“During the hearing on January 9 the judges unsheathed a ‘hot’ document, which lists the names of the Indian personalities, while on January 10 the Government of New Delhi said they were going to decide whether or not to apply the death penalty to the two Italian riflemen,” reported Tempo.
“Here is the card that could make the match between the Government of India and Italy hot: on the one hand is the destiny of our marines. On the other hand, according to a document in the file of the prosecutor, there are politicians in India who took millions in bribes from Finmeccanica for the supply of Agusta helicopter in 2010,” said the intro of the report in IL Fatto.
On January 9, the prosecutor produced a letter by one of the middlemen, Christian Michel, to Peter Hulett, Agusta’s representative in India. The letter said that the British High Commissioner should target Sonia Gandhi’s advisors to click the deal. Agusta is a British-Italian venture.