Aftermath News

Marina Litvinenko looks at Boris Berezovsky during a press call on the first anniversary of her husband Alexander’s death: ‘Russian state killed former spy Alexander Litvinenko’. (photo: CHRISTOPHER PLEDGER)

Telegraph | Jul 8, 2008

By Duncan Gardham and Robert Winnett

The Russian state was behind the killing of the former secret agent Alexander Litvinenko, a senior official has disclosed in private.

“We very strongly believe the Litvinenko case to have had some state involvement, there are very strong indications that it was a state action,” the senior security official told the BBC.

Marina Litvinenko, the widow of the murdered agent, has been pressing for official recognition that the use of radioactive polonium 210 must have been state-sanctioned.

To date the Government has remained silent on the responsibility for the killing merely requesting the extradition of Andrei Lugovoi, a former KGB bodyguard who is the main suspect in the case.

Referring to a later attempt to assassinate the businessman Boris Berezovsky, who employed Litvinenko, the security source said the “continued willingness” of the domestic security branch the FSB to “consider operations against people in the West” was causing major diplomatic problems.

His comments came as the Prime Minister held a “frank” meeting with the new Russian president, Dimitry Medvedev.

During a private meeting at the G8 summit in Japan, the Prime Minister is understood to have raised the assassination of Litvinenko in London, problems faced by oil company BP operating in Russia, and the treatment of the British Council – which has been forced to close several Russian offices.

It appeared that Britain had walked away from the talks empty-handed amid signs that the Russians may have been annoyed by Mr Brown’s approach.

Mr Brown’s spokesman insisted that the meeting was “constructive and worthwhile” although neither side said that the relationship had fully recovered.

A spokesman for Mr Brown said: “Clearly we are not going to solve all the problems in one meeting. But it is important we have a constructive relationship.”

Sergey Prikhodko, an aide to the Russian President, said: “President Medvedev and UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown had frank discussions and did not avoid any ’sharp issues’.

The two leaders spent more than an hour together with less than half of the time spent on the issues which have caused the rift between the two countries.

BP, Britain’s largest oil firm, is facing increasing problems operating in Russia. The firm has complained that its staff have been prevented from obtaining visas.

Mr Brown is understood to have raised the issue with the Russian President yesterday. Although Mr Medvedev said the issue was beyond his control, British officials are now confident that the situation may improve.

However, there is less optimism that Mr Lugovoi will be deported from Russia as has now been elected to the Russian Duma [parliament].

This week’s summit is President Medvedev’s first major appearance on the international stage since becoming president in May.

Mr Medvedev has travelled to Hokkaido in northern Japan without former President Putin who is now the Russian Prime Minister but is thought by many to still be the most powerful figure in Russia.

Woman, husband said to shackle victims to beds, keep them in dog cages without food

WorldNetDaily  | Jul 1, 2008

A Democratic Party official and her husband are facing charges in connection with alleged satanic rituals involving the kidnap, rape and starvation of another couple in North Carolina.

Joy Johnson, 30, a vice-chairwoman of the Durham County Democratic Party and vice chairwoman of the Young Democrats, made an appearance in court yesterday after she and her spouse, Joseph Craig, were arrested Friday.

Craig, 25, is charged with second-degree rape, second-degree kidnapping and two counts of assault with a deadly weapon for an incident in January and another in May. Johnson is charged with two counts of aiding and abetting.

According to published and broadcast reports, prosecutors said a man and a woman met Craig through a shared interest in Satan worship, although the couple never consented to any physical abuse.

Craig allegedly shackled his victims to beds, kept them in dog cages and starved them inside his home. Police say he beat the man with a cane and a cord, and raped the woman.

“This goes well above what they were interested in doing,” Mark McCullough, an assistant district attorney, told WTVD-TV.

McCullough was unsuccessful yesterday in having Judge Nancy Gordon increase Johnson’s bail to $500,000 from the $270,000 set by a magistrate.

“Part of the allegations are that satanic worship is part of this case,” he told the Raleigh News & Observer.

State Sen. Floyd McKissick, D-Durham, said he had been told Johnson had resigned her positions with the party.

“I was absolutely shocked and flabbergasted,” McKissick told the paper. “You never would have suspected allegations that she would have had any participation in these rituals.”

Along with her interest in the Democratic Party, Johnson is one of the driving forces of a New Age website called “Indigo Dawn,” a name which, according to the site, was given to Johnson during a meditation vision.

“She decided to explore the New Age community more, and after taking a course in Reiki healing, experiencing past-life regression along with direct guidance from her spirit guides, she confirmed that her destiny was to help bring about the New Age on Earth,” Johnson’s online biography states. “Joy shared her vision with her husband, Joe; as a result the Indigo Dawn was founded to raise the vibration of energy on Earth.”

Among the services Johnson offers online are “intuitive guidance, past-life regression, spirit guide communication and healing and cleansing.”

Robert Mugabe moves to erase the MDC

The Times | Jul 4, 2008

Catherine Philp in Harare

President Mugabe’s henchmen believe that they can retake Parliament using violence or trumped-up criminal charges to drive out elected opposition MPs

Fresh from his rigged election victory, Robert Mugabe and his military backers plan to assassinate or frame dozens of opposition MPs in an attempt to consolidate power and take back control of Parliament.

The Zanu (PF) party of Mr Mugabe lost its grip on the legislature for the first time since independence when the Movement for Democratic Change took control of the Lower House and drew level in the Senate after the March elections.

Having overturned Morgan Tsvangirai’s victory in the first round of the presidential vote with a brutal campaign of terror, President Mugabe’s henchmen believe that they can retake Parliament using violence or trumped-up criminal charges to drive out elected opposition MPs.

Leaked minutes from a meeting of the Joint Operation Command outline a strategy by which the MPs can be forced from office, sparking by-elections that Zanu (PF) planned to win by force. The original plan was to overturn the majority by challenging opposition wins through the courts, alleging that the results had been rigged. The refusal of judges to kowtow has led the regime to resort to tried and tested methods of violence.

Naison Nemadizwa, the newly elected MDC MP for Buhera South, was abducted in daylight on Tuesday as he emerged from the High Court in Harare having seen off a legal challenge by the losing Zanu (PF) candidate. Onlookers saw him bundled into the back of a waiting car and driven away after he became involved in an argument with a group of six men. One of his abductors was identified as a colonel in the army.

“We are starting to see a pattern emerge,” Nelson Chamisa, the MDC spokesman, said. “This is a consistent, co-ordinated strategy.” Ten opposition MPs have been arrested in recent weeks and two remain in custody while others are out on bail charged with a range of offences alleging their involvement in election violence. Another, Thamsanqa Mahlangu, remains in a coma after he was attacked by the Zanu (PF) youth militia on his way to Mr Tsvangirai’s election rally in Harare a week before the election. Mr Tsvangirai pulled out of the election within hours of the attack, saying that he could no longer ask supporters to take such risks.

Sources say that the regime is setting its sights on the remaining opposition MPs, arresting those it can on trumped-up charges of assault, theft and rape. If convicted, the MPs would lose their seats, sparking by-elections that Zanu (PF) plans to win by employing the terror tactics that won Mr Mugabe his sixth presidential term.

Mr Mugabe’s inauguration on Sunday took place less than an hour after the announcement of official results handing him victory with ten times the number of votes as Mr Tsvangirai.

In contrast, Parliament has yet to be convened since the March 29 elections gave the MDC 100 seats against 99 for Zanu (PF), with another ten seats for the breakaway MDC faction of Arthur Mutambara and one for an independent. The Mutambara faction, which broke off in 2005, has promised to back Mr Tsvangirai’s group in Parliament. The Senate is evenly split between the ruling party and the Opposition but the Constitution allows the President to appoint a further 33 senators.

An editorial in the state-run Herald yesterday noted that Mr Tsvangirai’s party could not claim a majority in its own right without the Mutambara faction, which “can decide to side with any of the two big parties”. Sources say that this reflects another part of the latest strategy — to buy off or coerce the Mutambara faction into backing Zanu (PF) and forming what the regime will claim is a government of national unity. Cracks have appeared within the faction, with its official spokesman dismissed for attending Mr Mugabe’s inauguration.

The witch-hunt has sent scores of MDC MPs into hiding, which could debar them from Parliament. Under Zimbabwean law, any parliamentarian can be dismissed for failing to attend for 21 consecutive days.

Why is this man smiling? Prince Charles saw his income rise by £1.1million last year  -  and his tax bill fall by £5,000. Perhaps he is also tickled by the fact that the British taxpayers subsidize his already opulently wealthy family with tens of millions in public funding every year, and still bow down to them as though they were gods.

“Charles is earning ever greater amounts from the Duchy of Cornwall and managing to pay ever less tax.”

DAILY MAIL | Jul 1,  2008

The future king collected some £18,727,000, most of it from his Duchy of Cornwall estates.

His accounts show this included office stationery and staff salaries, among them his butlers and valets, and even the cost of maintaining the flower borders at Highgrove, his country estate.

Experts said Charles’s tax bill of  £3.4million amounted to just 21 per cent of his pretax income. But aides stressed that he paid 41 per cent on the amount eligible for tax.

The prince’s private secretary Sir Michael Peat insisted: ‘His tax affairs are absolutely whiter than white and the Inland Revenue go through them with a fine-tooth comb.’

Clarence House said Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall had tried to cut costs ‘at all levels’ and their personal spending had dropped by £400,000 to £2.2million.

It said the prince and his family  -  including his sons William and Harry  -  cost only 4p a year for every man, woman and child in the UK.

But Labour MP Ian Davidson, of the Public Accounts Committee, warned that his colleagues would continue to examine the Duchy’s accounts ‘with vigour’.

He said: ‘Yet again, Charles is earning ever greater amounts from the Duchy of Cornwall and managing to pay ever less tax.’

The prince’s Annual Review includes a detailed report on Charles’s ‘green’ credentials. It says he has cut his carbon footprint by 18 per cent by switching to environmentallyfriendly sources of electricity and heating and reducing his travel.

Even his Aston Martin sports car has been converted to use bioethanol fuel produced from surplus British wine.

The prince’s main source of income  -  £16,273,000  -  is the Duchy of Cornwall, a private estate with properties in 23 counties.

Last year its value rose to £647million as soaring food prices led to the biggest increase in agricultural land values for 25 years.

Charles also receives funding from the Government to cover the cost of running his London office, his official residence, Clarence House, and his travel on official business and overseas tours.

The £10.4million he was able to write off included £5.4million in staff costs, £416,000 for official entertaining and receptions, £139,000 on utility bills and £63,000 on maintaining his gardens.

Although he and Camilla are keen gardeners, the majority of the costs of the Highgrove flower beds are listed as tax-deductible because they are ‘mainly’ used for official visits by members of the public.

In all, Charles employs 111 staff, including valets and orderlies.

Mike Warburton, senior tax partner of accountancy firm Grant Thornton, praised the prince for the ‘transparency’ of his accounts and said the Royal Family ran ‘a pretty tight ship’.

But he added: ‘I suspect many of my clients might struggle to get approval for some of the tax-deductible expenses that the prince does.’

Sir Michael Peat said of the report: ‘I hope it shows a good picture. I don’t want to sound complacent but I believe the contribution their royal highnesses make to national life continues to develop and broaden and strengthen.’

Camilla’s cut back on engagements

The Duchess of Cornwall carried out fewer engagements last year than she did in 2006.

Camilla undertook 201 official visits - of which 50 were overseas –compared to 222 the previous year.

However aides rejected criticism that the Duchess was ‘workshy’.

They explained that it was in part due to a period of convalescence following her hysterectomy operation last spring.

Her staff have always insisted she is not a working member of the Royal Family in her own right and that her primary role is to support her husband in his official engagements.

The claim over her special working status also allows them to mask the true ‘cost of Camilla’ in the prince’s accounts.

However, the report reveals that she has two dressers and three members of office staff working for her.

Charles carried out 609 official engagements last year while his 82-year-old mother conducted 440.

In this video still taken from the web site of the El Heraldo de Leon on Tuesday July 1, 2008, a policeman undergoes a torture session by fellow officers during a training session for an elite unit in the city of Leon, Mexico. Several videos, first obtained by the Heraldo de Leon newspaper, have created an uproar in Mexico as police struggle with recent scandals over abuses. (AP Photo/El Heraldo de Leon)

AP | Jul 2, 2008

By TRACI CARL

MEXICO CITY - Videos showing Leon police practicing torture techniques on a fellow officer and dragging another through vomit at the instruction of a U.S. adviser created an uproar Tuesday in Mexico, which has struggled to eliminate torture in law enforcement.

Two of the videos — broadcast by national television networks and displayed on newspaper Internet sites — showed what Leon city Police Chief Carlos Tornero described as training for an elite unit that must face “real-life, high-stress situations,” such as kidnapping and torture by organized crime groups.

But many Mexicans saw a sinister side, especially at a moment when police and soldiers across the country are struggling with scandals over alleged abuses.

“They are teaching police … to torture!” read the headline in the Mexico City newspaper Reforma.

Human rights investigators in Guanajuato state, where Leon is located, are looking into the tapes, and the National Human Rights Commission also expressed concerned.

“It’s very worrisome that there may be training courses that teach people to torture,” said Raul Plascencia, one of the commission’s top inspectors.

One of the videos, first obtained by the newspaper El Heraldo de Leon, shows police appearing to squirt water up a man’s nose — a technique once notorious among Mexican police. Then they dunk his head in a hole said to be full of excrement and rats. The man gasps for air and moans repeatedly.

In another video, an unidentified English-speaking trainer has an exhausted agent roll into his own vomit. Other officers then drag him through the mess.

“These are no more than training exercises for certain situations, but I want to stress that we are not showing people how to use these methods,” Tornero said.

He said the English-speaking man was part of a private U.S. security company helping to train the agents, but he refused to give details.

A third video transmitted by the Televisa network showed officers jumping on the ribs of a suspect curled into a fetal position in the bed of a pickup truck. Tornero said that the case, which occurred several months earlier, was under investigation and that the officers involved had disappeared.

Mexican police often find themselves in the midst of brutal battles between drug gangs. Officials say that 450 police, soldiers and prosecutors have lost their lives in the fight against organized crime since December 2006.

At the same time, several recent high-profile scandals over alleged thuggery and ineptness have reignited criticisms of police conduct. In Mexico City last month, 12 people died in a botched police raid on a disco.

The National Human Rights Commission has documented 634 cases of military abuse since President Felipe Calderon sent more than 20,000 soldiers across the nation to battle drug gangs.

And $400 million in drug-war aid for Mexico that was just signed into law by President George W. Bush doesn’t require the U.S. to independently verify that the military has cleaned up its fight, as many American lawmakers and Mexican human rights groups had insisted.

The videos may seem shocking, but training police to withstand being captured is not unusual, said Robert McCue, the director of the private, U.S. firm IES Interactive Training, which provides computer-based training systems in Mexico.

“With the attacks on police and security forces in Mexico that have increased due to the drug cartel wars, I’m not surprised to see this specialized kind of training in resisting and surviving captivity and torture,” he said.

Zimbabweans in despair over Mugabe ‘election victory’

Total Catholic | Jun 30, 2008

Zimbabweans are in widespread despair after the country’s ruler Robert Mugabe was sworn in as president for a sixth term, a Catholic Church official has said.

“People know if they disobey they will be beaten up,” Mr Chaumba said. “The level of brutality in the rural areas has reached unimaginable proportions.”

While many people in Zimbabwe’s cities did not turn up at the polling stations, people in rural areas “were warned that they had to go and vote,” he said.

“They were not allowed into the booths on their own but were made to tell the electoral officers that they were unable to read or write and then were given folded ballots (for Mugabe) to hand in,” he said.

“A blanket of fear engulfs the countryside,” said Mr Chaumba, who visited numerous villages on Sunday. “Where there is no rule of law, anything can happen.”

In high-density hostels in Harare, the capital, people were told they would be evicted if they did not vote, he said.

Opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai, who withdrew from the runoff election because of the violence, won the most votes in the first round of presidential voting in March but not enough for an outright victory.

Human rights groups said opposition supporters have been the targets of brutal state-sponsored violence since March, leaving more than 80 dead and 200,000 displaced.

Zimbabwe’s electoral commission reported more than 2 million votes cast for Mugabe, and 233,000 for Tsvangirai, whose name was still on the ballot although he withdrew from the election on June 22.

The government reported the turnout at about 42 per cent, with about 131,000 spolied ballots.

Bishop Kevin Dowling of Rustenburg, South Africa, said he hopes governments in the African Union “have the courage of their convictions to speak out against Mugabe” at the June 30-July 1 summit of the 53-nation bloc in Egypt. Mugabe is attending the meeting.

Zimbabwe’s Jesuits said Mugabe’s campaign claim that “only God can remove me from power” is outrageous.

“In making such an outrageous claim, Mugabe, who likes to be known as ‘a devout Catholic’ goes completely against the teaching of the Catholic Church and the Church’s positive attitude toward democracy,” the Jesuits said.

De Menezes police granted anonymity

Press Association | Jun 28, 2008

All 44 police officers who applied for anonymity at the inquest into the death of Jean Charles de Menezes will have their identity kept secret using a screen and code-names.

The officers will be given pseudonyms or code-names and those called to give evidence in person will do so from behind a screen.

But the coroner gave some members of the de Menezes family special permission to see the anonymous witnesses give evidence.

Many officers due to give written or oral evidence did not apply for anonymity, including Deputy Assistant Commissioner Cressida Dick, the commander responsible for the operation that ultimately led to Mr de Menezes death.

The Brazilian was shot dead at Stockwell tube station, London, by counter-terrorist police who mistook him for suicide bomber Hussain Osman on July 22, 2005.

Giving his reasons for the decision, the coroner said many of the officers continued to take part in covert anti-terrorism and serious organised crime operations. He said this meant there was a genuine fear that officers and their families could be put at risk if they gave evidence without anonymity.

It would also jeopardise their ability to take part in future operations. The coroner said this would cause a reduction of resources at a time of high demand for such operations.

A spokesman for the Jean Charles de Menezes Family Campaign said such “blanket anonymity” hinders public scrutiny of public officials. The family are unhappy no individual officer has taken responsibility for the 27-year-old’s death despite the prosecution of the Metropolitan Police last year.

The force was convicted at the Old Bailey of a catastrophic series of errors over the shooting and fined £175,000 with a legal costs bill of almost £1 million.

The well-heeled British monarch visited her wealthy cousin George Bush last year during her trip to the US which cost British taxpayers a whopping $820,000.

Independent | Jun 28, 2008

Taxpayers left with £40m bill to fund royals last year

By Robert Verkaik, Law Editor

The public cost of the monarchy rose by an inflation-busting 5 per cent last year, largely because of an increase in the upkeep of Buckingham Palace and expensive trips abroad.

But the Queen says she must have more money to help repair her crumbling palaces. Yesterday her advisers made clear that unless the Government provides further funds, the monarch faces the embarrassment of hosting functions in state rooms with leaky roofs and peeling wallpaper.

Palace insiders said the Queen had already expressed concern about whether she could afford to make the vital repairs needed to her properties. Sir Alan Reid, Keeper of the Privy Purse, said it was a cause of “major disappointment” that ministers had refused to increase public expenditure on the palaces which he estimated now required £32m of work in the next 10 years. He said most of the state rooms had not been redecorated or “re-presented” in the entire 55-year reign of the Queen.

But a spokesman for the Department for Culture Media and Sport said the Royal Household was just one of 70 public bodies, including the Arts Council and English Heritage, for which the Government provided state grants.

The spokesman added: “DCMS has not seen the information on which the Royal Household’s estimate of £32m is based on, and so cannot comment on its accuracy. Through DCMS’s property maintenance experts, Watts Plc, we are working with the Royal Household’s Property Services Section to ensure the maintenance work is prioritised to control the backlog.”

The Queen’s case for increased funding was partly undermined by some of the eye-catching travel expenses racked up by Prince Charles. Accounts show that the Caribbean cruise last year enjoyed by the Prince and the Duchess of Cornwall cost the taxpayer £275,000, of which £210,000 went on chartering a yacht. It cost taxpayers a further £18,916 for Prince Charles to visit the Black Swan Pub, in Cumbria, on a trip intended to highlight the importance of rural communities.

The total spent on royal travel rose to £6.2m up by £600,000 from last year. On the Queen’s state visit to America last year to celebrate the 400th anniversary of the Jamestown settlement a plane was chartered at a cost of £381,813.

And it cost nearly £800,000 to send the Duke of York to several foreign destinations, including Rio de Janeiro, Miami, Tokyo and Kuala Lumpur, as the UK’s Special Representative for International Trade and Investment.

But Sir Alan insisted that the cost of the monarchy was just 66p per person which he said was still less than the price of two pints of milk or a download for an MP3 player.

The anti-monarchy campaign group Republic said the true bill to the taxpayer would be nearer £150m a year if the costs of police and army security were included. The group’s spokes-man, Graham Smith, said the Queen should have a fixed salary managed by the Government and that parliament should set an annual budget for the monarchy.

The Windsors’ expenses

£187,000

Salary of Sir Alan Reid, Keeper of Privy Purse.

£410,000

Cost of charter and scheduled flights during royal tour of United States, May 2007.

£40,513

Cost of Prince Charles’ use of the Royal Train, left, on visit to Liverpool and Aberdeen on official engagements, April 22- 24 2007

£700,000

Garden parties

£33,309

Cost of flights for the reconnaissance by the Queen’s staff in advance of state visit to Uganda last year.

£900,000

Cost of royal gardens.

£300,000

Cost of energyconservation.

£200,000

Legal advice, including advice regarding the Diana inquiry.

£300,000

Double glazing and new sash windows at Windsor Castle.

Ms Minardi alleged that Miss Orlandi had been seized and killed on the orders of Archbishop Paul Marcinkus, the then head of the Vatican bank. Marcinkus, (foreground), was the head of the Vatican Bank from 1971 to 1989.

The Vatican has been accused of ordering the assassination of a teenage girl who went missing 25 years ago.

Telegraph | Jun 23, 2008

By Malcolm Moore in Rome

Emanuela Orlandi, the daughter of a Vatican employee, was 15 years old when she disappeared after a flute lesson in central Rome. She was last seen at a bus stop on her way home on June 22, 1983.

The investigation into her disappearance was reopened this week following new evidence from the former girlfriend of Enrico De Pedis, a Roman mobster.

Sabrina Minardi, a recovering drug addict, alleged in a statement to Italian police that De Pedis had kidnapped Miss Orlandi, put her in a sack and threw her into a cement mixer in Torvaianica, an area of sand dunes on the coast near Rome.

Ms Minardi also alleged that Miss Orlandi had been seized and killed on the orders of Archbishop Paul Marcinkus, the then head of the Vatican bank. Monsignor Marcinkus died in 2006 in Sun City, Arizona, after being disgraced during his spell in Rome.

The archbishop was investigated by the Organised Crime office of the US Justice Department after they found a request for $950 million of counterfeit bonds made on Vatican notepaper.

In 1982, Mgr Marcinkus was implicated in the collapse of Banco Ambrosiano and the murder of Roberto Calvi, the head of the bank whose body was found swinging from Blackfriars Bridge in London.

The archbishop is alleged to have had ties with Michele Sindona, a mafioso, and was forced to stand aside as head of the Vatican Bank in 1989.

Miss Orlandi was killed on Mgr Marcinkus’ orders “to send a message to someone”, said Ms Minardi, without revealing more. She claimed De Pedis had taken her to lunch in Torvaianica and told her he had two sacks in his car.

“He said he had the body of Emanuela Orlandi with him,” Ms Minardi claimed in her police statement.

De Pedis and his driver “went to a building site. I stayed in the car. They threw it all into a cement mixer. That’s how they got rid of all the proof”.

She added: “This was not a kidnapping for money, it was a symbolic kidnapping. They seized Emanuela to give someone a message.”

She also said she sometimes took girls to meet Mgr Marcinkus in an apartment in Via Porta Angelica.

“That happened four or five times. He was dressed like a normal person,” she said, adding that she took bags of money to the prelate as well in order to have the money laundered.

Miss Orlandi’s family said they wanted further proof before believing “any witness”.

The investigators also added that there were “some issues of incongruence, especially involving time periods,” with Ms Minardi’s statement but that “are also some details that are so precise and detailed that they deserve further investigation”.

Related

THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS
Vatican Politics, the Calvi Murder and Beyond.

St. Peter’s Squared
Roberto Calvi and the P2 Masonic Lodge Conspiracy

After the disappearance of Emanuela Orlandi in 1983, police put posters up on streets appealing for information

The Times | Jun 24, 2008

Richard Owen in Rome

An Italian girl whose disappearance 25 years ago baffled investigators was murdered and thrown into a cement mixer by the gang which kidnapped her, according to a new witness.

Police this week re-opened the inquiry into the disappearance of Emanuela Orlandi, the daughter of a Vatican employee, in June 1983 following new evidence from a former mistress of the leader of the Banda della Magliana (Magliana Gang), Rome’s most notorious underworld gang.

The gang allegedly kidnapped Ms Orlandi as part of a plot to put pressure on the Italian authorities to release Mehmet Ali Agca, the Turkish gunman who tried to kill Pope John Paul II on St Peters Square in May 1981.

Some investigators have speculated that Ms Orlandi, who was 15 at the time of her disappearance, was passed by the Magliana Gang to the Turkish ultra right “Grey Wolves”, to which Agca belonged, and who are said to have organised the attempt on the Pope’s life in league with Bulgarian agents acting on behalf of the KGB.

According to this theory Ms Orlandi, who would be forty if still alive, came to identify with her captors and became a Muslim, living in either Turkey or Paris.

However the unnamed witness, the former mistress of Enrico De Pedis, the Magliana Gang boss, has told police that Ms Orlandi was killed. Her body was then put into a sack and thrown in a cement mixer at Torvaianica, an area of sand dunes on the coast near Rome.

Questioned by Rome prosecutors, the witness said Ms Orlandi had been held prisoner at a building near Piazza San Giovanni di Dio, not far from the Vatican, which had “a huge basement”. However the girl was later murdered because she had become a liability.

The witness said that De Pedis - who was known as “Renato” or “Renatino” - had taken her to lunch in a restaurant in Torvaianica, where they met his driver, who had two sacks in his car. “He said he had the body of Emanuela Orlandi with him. I don’t know what was inside the sack because I stayed in the car. He said though that in was better to get rid of everything, that’s what he thought.

Destroy everything so that there would be no evidence, nothing left. He told me that he had thrown those two bodies into that cement mixer.”

They had gone to a building site, where “at a certain point they started the cement mixer,” putting the sacks in it. “Afterwards I asked Renato: ‘Hey, what was in there?’. He said to me, it’s better to kill them straight away, get rid of the evidence straight away”.

The witness said she believed the body in the other sack was that of Domenico Nicitra, the eleven year old son of Salvatore Nicitra, a rival gang boss. However, the Corriere della Sera newspaper said Domenico Nicitra and his uncle Francesco had disappeared much later, in June 1993.

Ms Orlandi disappeared after taking flute lessons at a music school near Piazza Navona in the centre of Rome. She told her sister she had been offered a summer job by a cosmetics firm and was meeting its representative. She was later seen by eyewitnesses getting into “a dark BMW”, and has not been seen since, even though Rome was plastered with “missing” posters and Pope John Paul appealed for her release.

The Orlandi family subsequently received anonymous phone calls from the alleged kidnappers - some with rough Roman accents but one with “an American” accent - offering to release their daughter in exchange for Agca, who was imprisoned in a high security jail. Secret negotiations came to nothing however.

There have been reported sightings in Rome of Ms Orlandi, but none has ever been confirmed. While in prison in Italy, Agca, who has since been extradited to Turkey, told an interviewer he had no “direct knowledge” of Ms Orlandi’s fate, but believed she was alive and “living in a cloistered convent”.

The involvment of the Magliana Gang surfaced three years ago when an anonymous caller to “Chi L’Ha Visto?”,an Italian TV programme on missing persons, suggested the clue to the mystery lay in the fact that De Pedis - who was gunned down by rival gangsters near Campo de Fiori in the centre of Rome in February 1990 - was buried in the crypt of the church of Saint Apollinaris, next to the music school which Ms Orlandi attended. It remains unclear why a top criminal was given the honour of burial in a crypt normally reserved for cardinals, saints and martyrs.

Natalina Orlandi, Emanuela’s sister, said she would not believe that her sister was dead “until we have definite proof.” Maria Orlandi, her mother, said she hoped Pope Benedict XVI would now issue an appeal to other witnesses to “search their consciences”and “break their silence” about Ms Orlandi’s fate.