PRESS RELEASE

Hunger strike in prison of the Italian citizen Francesco Pazienza D. aimed at soliciting the U.S. Department of Justice to deliver an answer.

In 1987 the then Government of the Republic of Italy decided to seal under the STATE SECRET restraining order the whole extradition file of Dr. Francesco PAZIENZA D. from the U.S. kept in the Italian Ministry of Justice to forestall s request for consultation submitted by the International Law Department of the Rome University of Tor Vergata.
The STATE SECRET classification is still in force nowadays.
From March until december 2004 the U.S. Department of State, following a request submitted by a researcher of a Geneva based N.G.O. as per the U.S. Law called F.O.I.A. (Freedom of Information Act), consented to declassify and deliver all such documents that were, and still are, unavailable in Italy.
The unmentionable reasons that determinated such a sealing under the Italian law nr. 801 of 1977 were stripped bare.
After perusing the documents delivered by the U.S. Department of State including a set of them originally classified as "SECRET" or "CONFIDENTIAL" by the U.S. it came out that the then Government of Italy had willfully perpetrated multiple violations of the provisions of the U.S. - Italy Extradition Treaty of 1983.
Breaches of the Rule of Specialty foreseen into Art. XVI as well the violation by omission of the mandatory obligations included into Art. X and having furthermore proffered to the American counterpart a rendition of the facts and alleged proof of evidences being unfaithful if not openly false.
It is today understandable that such behavior of deception had been implemented by the Italian Government after having previously received several communications by both the U.S. Department of State and the U.S. Department of Justice that were qualifying the reasons for the extradition demands and related documentation previously submitted as being legally baseless.
To this purpose is interesting to read a message classified as "SECRET" of Nov. 14, 1984 dispatched by the U.S. Ambassador in Italy Mr. Maxwell Rabb to the U.S. Department of State where the diplomat was informing that he had met the director of the Italian spy agency SISMI on his demand and who, on behalf of the then prime minister, solicited the rendition of Pazienza no matter if there was no legal justifications for a legitimate extradition.
To facilitate this scheme the Italian spy chief even traveled to Langley (VA) asking for the help of the director of the Central Intelligence Agency.
To a F.O.I.A. request submitted to the C.I.A. for the releasing of documentation related to its involvement in the Pazienza extradition and as well of its relationship with an Italian magistrate very active in that matter the Agency refused to consent calling the exemptions listed as obligations to protect intelligence's sources and methods.
Further messages declassified and delivered by the U.S. Department of State show how the Italian Ministry of Justice was highly recommending the American counterpart to do its best for finding the way to skip U.S. Judges and Courts who might have realized, in the matter of the extradition of Dr. Francesco Pazienza, how the charges were openly trumped up.
It is not by a coincidence that even the Italian Supreme Court in 1993 stated that the extradition of Pazienza from the U.S. had been extremely equivocal confirming his acquittal after being charged and prosecuted for slander after having publicly stated that his extradition from the U.S. had been obtained with "phoney papers".
On March 10, 2005 Dr. francesco Pazienza readied a memorandum in English of 66 pages sending it from the prison of Livorno, where he is detained, to the head of the legal affairs of the U.S. Embassy in Rome, Mr. Nicolas Acker.
In this document he was outlining how the effects stemming from the blatant violations committed by the then Italian Government were rendering his detention openly illegal and illegitimate.
The parcel sent via registered mail mysteriously disappeared from the circuit of the Italian Postal Service and never reached the address of the U.S. Embassy in Rome.
More than a month later Mr. Acker would eventually receive that same document because delivered by Pazienza's defence counsel in Rome.
Mr. Acker having ascertained the extreme seriousness of what asserted by Pazienza decided to dispatch the document along with the annexed exhibits to the U.S. Department of Justice in Washington.

On June 20, 2005 Francesco Pazienza D. will start in the prison of Livorno (Leghorn, Italy) an all out hunger strike that he will interrupt only when the U.S. Department of justice will decide to give an answer, whatever it may be, to the legal questions submitted concerning the violations committed by the Government of Italy over the extradition procedure that render his present detention status as totally illegitimate.

Presently Dr. Francesco Pazienza firmly believes that he is no more a person legally detained in a prison of a democratic Country but a kidnapped person by a State where does not exist the Rule of Law.
All the documents declassified by the U.S. Department of State and the memorandum of Dr. Pazienza landed on the U.S. Department of Justice are posted on the web site:
 http://www.pazienzahungerstrike.info