With a sentence that was published on October 27, the Second Civil Section of Court of Reggio Calabria, defining the judgment that was promoted by Agostino Cordova against the Grand Orient of Italy of Palazzo Giustiniani, rejected the request made by the former Chief Prosecutor ordering him to pay the costs procedural in favor of the GOI.
This is a very important provision for the Order given that ordinary Justice has considered it the criticism that defined Palmi’s investigation as a “witch hunt” is legitimate of the then Prosecutor Cordova which culminated in July 2000 with the filing in Rome.
“Dear Brothers, this sentence – said the Grand Master Stefano Bisi – makes us rejoice because it also does justice to the many Brothers who found themselves in those distant but painful years ’92 and ’93 for all of us persecuted and who underwent a night search of the police following that investigation.
It is for this reason that today we feel a particular joy in the face of the sentence that he writes unequivocally the excesses of the Cordova investigation and which gives satisfaction to the Grand Orient of Italy at Palazzo Giustiniani even if it will never be able to heal and cancel the damage suffered by so many of our dear Brothers who have been fed to public opinion as criminals ”.
Here are the details the reconstruction of the legal matter which led to the favorable sentence for the Goi which was defended by the lawyers Raffaele D’Ottavio and Fabio Federico:
The legal matter originates from the initiative of the Grand Master, Stefano Bisi, aimed at obtaining the restitution of the massive amount of the documents seized to the GOI back in 1993 at the instigation of the then Chief Prosecutor Agostino Cordova as part of the well-known investigation against Freemasonry.
In particular, the newspaper Il Dubbio – taking its cue from the public address of the Grand Master Stefano Bisi held on the occasion of the Grand Loggia in 2017, during which the acceptance of the request and the start of the restitution of the seized documents was announced – published an extensive article with which, recalling the decree of archiving, he came severely criticized the modus operandi that had characterized that well-known judicial investigation.
In fact, we read in the aforementioned sentence: “The accusations made (ed by Agostino Cordova) do not appear to be well founded because the article being judged starts from a recent fact, that is the return of the first files seized during the investigation into Freemasonry, to retrace the progress of the aforementioned investigation, certainly using critical tones that are also taken up by the archiving provision of the ‘investigation issued by the Court of Rome in 2001 “.
The multiplicity of severe and harsh expressions used in the aforementioned press article does not allow them to be fully transcribed in this short report; therefore, please refer to the attached article for a more precise and exhaustive representation, only some of those considered by the former Prosecutor as defamatory can be reported below: “(ed. Cordova) nicknamed the “Minotaur” saw Naples as the capital of Evil!; “The hunt for the Freemason began in 1992….” The GIP who closed the investigation defined it devoid of news of crime and illegitimate “; “Those seized were folders full of stories, of faces and names that were pilloried in a witch hunt ended with a hole in the water“; “… According to Bisi the Freemasons were persecuted, pointed out, treated as mafiosi; that Cordova, from his office in Palmi, had tried in every way, only to pass the ball to Rome, due to territorial jurisdiction “; “Over the years ‘those documents have remained in the hands of the prosecutors, without anyone bothering to erase the stigma printed in large letters on the identity card of each of the Freemasons who ended up under the magnifying glass'”; “According to the GIP… often the investigations on secret associations resulted in a pile of dust (a phrase never used by the GIP), ending up being cognitive and, as such, they should be carefully avoided.
And article 330 of the criminal procedure code had been interpreted as the power of the public prosecutor and the judicial police to acquire news and not, as it should be, news of a crime “; “…as well as he saw monsters in the Masons at all costs“; “Almost 30 years later those monsters are gone, but what the witch hunt is never over“.
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