(ANSA) - Strasbourg, April 14 - Bruno Contrada, the former
number two of Italian domestic secret service agency SISDE,
should not have been convicted on charges of helping the Mafia,
the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) ruled on Tuesday.
The court said the crime Contrada was convicted of, aiding and abetting a mafia-type organisation from the outside, was not defined sufficiently clearly at the time of the alleged offences, between 1979 and 1988.
The court ordered the Italian State to pay Contrada 10,000 euros in damages.
"No one will ever be able to give back the 23 years of my life that were devastated, nor the 10 years spent in prison," Contrada said Tuesday.
Contrada worked as Palermo police chief in the 1970s, as a top Criminalpol official, as a top official at the anti-Mafia commission and finally as number two at SISDE. In his trial, several former mobsters who had become State witnesses testified against him, saying that Contrada had provided Cosa Nostra with secret information on police and judicial investigations. In 2007 the supreme court upheld a 10-year prison term for Contrada, making his conviction definitive for Italian justice, after a long legal battle. Contrada has always denied the accusations, saying they were motivated by a desire for revenge. SISDE was replaced by another intelligence agency, AISI, in 2007.
The court said the crime Contrada was convicted of, aiding and abetting a mafia-type organisation from the outside, was not defined sufficiently clearly at the time of the alleged offences, between 1979 and 1988.
The court ordered the Italian State to pay Contrada 10,000 euros in damages.
"No one will ever be able to give back the 23 years of my life that were devastated, nor the 10 years spent in prison," Contrada said Tuesday.
Contrada worked as Palermo police chief in the 1970s, as a top Criminalpol official, as a top official at the anti-Mafia commission and finally as number two at SISDE. In his trial, several former mobsters who had become State witnesses testified against him, saying that Contrada had provided Cosa Nostra with secret information on police and judicial investigations. In 2007 the supreme court upheld a 10-year prison term for Contrada, making his conviction definitive for Italian justice, after a long legal battle. Contrada has always denied the accusations, saying they were motivated by a desire for revenge. SISDE was replaced by another intelligence agency, AISI, in 2007.
