‘Show trial’ angers Italy

Press, 27 April 1983, Page 15

‘Show trial’ angers Italy

From

PETER JAROCKI

in Rome

Paolo Farsetti, who may or may not be a spy, is another bit-part player in the papal assassination drama. He has been jailed for 10 years for taking photographs of old Bulgarian tanks and deserted Bulgarian ports.

His stunningly attractive girlfriend, 26-year-old Gabriella Trevisih, was jailed for three years because she travelled with him on what both maintained was simply a tourist trip.

The Italians believe the couple were framed by the Bulgarian intelligence service so that they can eventually be used as hostages to secure the freedom of Serghej Antonov, the Bulgarian air traffic control officer now under arrest in Italy, who may or may not have been a conspirator in the plot to kill the Pope. The three-month trial, which ended earlier this month, is also seta in Italy as a regpsal for all the other “dirty business” that the

Italian judicial authorities have accused the Bulgarians of — such as spying, helping the Red Brigades, using Italy for arms and drugs trafficking, and planning to kill Lech Walesa, the Solidarity leader, on Italian soil. One of the oddities of the case was that, for the first time in the history of the Bulgarian Socialist Republic, the authorities opted for the appearance — but not, of course the substance — of a free and open trial, with a crossexamination of prosecution witnesses and attendance by the foreign Press. The result of this unheard-of democracy in Bulgaria was a farcical trial in which, the prosecution could not furnish anything vaguely, resembling a convincing case to justify convicting

In the public seats was Carlo Palermo, the Italian examining magistrate investigating the drugs and arms racket, in which heroin was smuggled into Italy from Turkey and the money obtained from its sales used to buy arms sold in the Middle East.

He had accepted a Bulgarian invitation to attend the proceedings. Being in Sofia also enabled him to talk to Bekir Celenk, a Turk who is alleged to be a big fish in the drug scandal and someone who knows something about the St Peter’s Square assassination attempt Much interest in the trial was provided by the behaviour of the two principal characters, Farsetti and Trevisin, and accounts of their past in Italy. FarsSti, aged 34,

would, on occasion, lecture the court, plead for mercy, and generally make an exhibition of himself. Several times he tried to assault the prosecution counsel, and even the judge, and had to be restrained by police. ' Gabriella Trevisin first "confessed” that Paolo was a spy and then retracted. The prosecution accused Farsetti of being a pimp and of making Gabriella work as a call girl in his native town of Arezzo, catering particularly for local politicians. This caused quite a stir in Arezzo, which happens to be the home of the Christian Democrat Prime Minister, Amintore Fanfani. (He is 75 years old.) Italian-Bulgarian relations are at their worst, with both ambassadors recalled home, and trade, cultural and tourist exchanges down to a trickle. Copyright — London* Observer Service. &