(...continued)
She was told over and over again to imagine that she was in the house. When she refused, she was slapped across the head.
This abuse went on for hours until Amanda was finally broken. Eventually, the Police took enough of the ideas that they had suggested to Amanda, and typed out a so called "confession", implicating Patrick. The statement was not written by Amanda. It was typed in Italian, and Amanda did not fully understand it. At least 12 police officers had taken part in the illegal interrogation.
But this story has an unbelievable punch line !!! (excuse the pun).
When Amanda later explained that she had not named Patrick, and that it was the Police who had forced the idea into her head, Mignini sued her for slander. Of course, there was an easy way to resolve that argument. Every single interview and interrogation that took place at the Police station was double taped, producing a "master" copy and a "working" copy. Listening to a copy of the working copy would provide the answer.
But, after a few days to think up an excuse, Mignini claimed that the Police could not produce the tape because, on one day, and one day only, they had ... ready to laugh until your sides hurt ... "forgotten to turn on the tape recorders"!
When you've finished laughing at the ridiculous absurdity of this preposterous lie, just think what Mignini was trying to have us believe. The Police recorded absolutely every word that Amanda uttered. They illegally bugged her cell. They tapped her phone. They tapped her family's phones and her friends' phones. They illegally bugged the room where she spoke to people at the Police station. They taped ... absolutely ... everything! But the tape that the Defence needed? They "forgot to turn on the tape recorders". That absolutely did not happen. It was a complete and utter lie by Mignini to hide what happened during the interrogation, where the Police had forced Amanda to implicate a man whom Amanda had repeatedly insisted was not involved.
Now clearly, in almost any Court other than in Italy, a judge would have felt obliged to reject Mignini's version of events, because it was a legal requirement that the prosecution taped the interrogation and, if they illegally failed to do so, then they would have to accept the consequences. But not in Italy. The Court accepted Mignini's somewhat implausible story about Amanda pointing a finger at Patrick Lumumba on the day when the Police "forgot to switch on the tape recorder". The Judge ruled in favour of Mignini, and convicted Amanda of slander.
And, since then, Amanda has had to live with the fiction that she accused Patrick. She can't argue any more, because she would be sued by Mignini again. And she can't prove what really happened, because the prosecutors, err ... "forgot to switch on the tape recorder"!
And that is why the so-called statement accusing Patrick has never been anything more than a sheet of paper in Italian, written by the Police, waved at the Press by Mignini. Because, when the Defence said Let's listen to the tape, and see what really happened ... the prosecutors destroyed the tape, and pretended that the Police had forgotten to switch on the tape recorder.
So, Amanda falsely accusing an innocent man? It never happened.