Regarding "Knox murder case ‘a polarizing’ journey" (Sunday Nation/World), one is left to wonder yet again what has been going through the minds of Italian authorities in their bizarre six year pursuit of American Amanda Knox. In the first trial, they concocted a motive of a murderous sex game gone wrong that was completely unsubstantiated by witnesses, testimony or physical evidence, and managed to convict her of murdering her roommate a mere six weeks after arriving in Italy. When that conviction was overturned and she was released, they decided to re-try her based on a brand new and equally bizarre theory that Knox was driven to murder by the failure of a mutual acquaintance to flush the toilet.
Forget the double jeopardy, the lack of due process, the pattern of prosecutorial misconduct relating to evidence or the fact that Italian police used interrogation techniques - including intimidation and sleep deprivation - that would have made any Guantanamo interrogator proud: It was the succession of lurid fantasies completely disconnected from the facts or reality that Italian authorities used to explain Knox's alleged homicidal tendencies that ought to sustain the outrage not just of Americans, but any fair-minded people.
Quasi-legalistic kidnapping is the kind of behavior we have come to expect from regimes like North Korea and Iran who capture and imprison Americans, the differences being that neither is an ally, their systems of justice are as brutal as their regimes, and they always have some kind of nefarious scheme as an endgame.
What could Italy's excuse possibly be?
Pete Smith
Cypress, TX
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