From the tragedy of Cermisupon the death of the secret service agent Nicola Calipariup to lesser cases not in the news: US soldiers always seem to get away with the justice of the country in which they commit a crime and this above all thanks to the London Convention of 1951 on the NATO military which provides that the jurisdiction must be that of the country of origin of the accused.
However, there are some exceptions, such as the one concerning Robert Scott Gardner, US military, serving at the Aviano air base (Pordenone), indicted on charges of raping a 14-year-old in Pordenone, together with three Albanian boys, two of them minors, in October 2002, in broad daylight in an attic of the Friulian city. It is also true that after eleven years from the disputed facts and ten and a half years from the first instance sentence that had sentenced him to six years of imprisonment and a provisional, immediately enforceable, of one hundred thousand euros, the trial started from scratch because, with the he notice of conclusion of the investigations, the committal for trial and the same sentence of first instance had been sent to the accused only in Italian, a language he did not understand.
He ended up in prison as well Dennis Gray, an American pariah sentenced to 7 and a half years in prison for raping a student in Vicenza. The young man was later also convicted of other harassment against another pregnant woman. He is one of the few American soldiers in Italian prisons, however. The 12 American soldiers involved in a fight outside a nightclub in Bassano del Grappa (Vicenza) also ended up under the blows of Italian justice, with the validation of the arrest, in 2016. In fact, the arrests have been validated for all of them.
The well-known Cermis tragedy, on the other hand, dates back to February 3, 1998 when a US military plane with 4 Marines on board cut the cables of the Cavalese cable car flying too low. The dead were 20 but it all ended with only compensation, without guilty. Those who lost their lives were tourists of various nationalities: seven Germans, five Belgians, two Poles, two Austrians, one Dutch and three Italians.
And also for the death of policeman Nicola Calipari, killed by US soldiers on March 4, 2005, while arriving by car at Baghdad airport, in the phases immediately following the release of the journalist. Giuliana Sgrena – the Supreme Court decided – confirming the sentence of the Court of Assizes of Rome which had ordered the non-place to proceed due to lack of jurisdiction – that no trial would take place and will take place in Italy for Mario Lozanothe US soldier accused of killing the SISMI official.
Source: Ansa
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