It is very likely that for the former Ukrainian intelligence agent Sehrii Kusnetzov, arrested in Italy and accused by German investigators of sabotaging the Nord Stream gas pipeline, Justice Minister Carlo Nordio will have less regard than for the Libyan butcher Usama Almasri and the Iranian Pasdaran engineer Mohammad Abedini, one saved from being handed over to the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity and the other from being extradited by the American justice system for participation in a terrorist organisation.
For two exponents of criminal regimes accused of the massacre of human lives, Minister Nordio chose to play the role of defender, first by examining the merits of the accusations – the punctiliousness with which he reviewed the ICC arrest warrant for Almasri in Parliament, questioning dates and circumstances was that of a true prince of the court – and then that of a political ‘super-judge’, securing the release of both.
He did so in a formally unexceptionable manner in the case of Abedini, on the basis of Article 718 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, and in a much more questionable manner in the case of Almasri, by refusing a theoretically obligatory cooperation with the ICC, in a procedure that does not provide for an extradition authorisation, as in the case of precautionary measures ordered on a foreign country’s warrant, but for the delivery of the accused to a Court – the ICC – which is not at all ‘third’ or ‘foreign’ with respect to Italy and the Italian judicial system.

The previous Almasri, Abedini and Uss cases

The proceedings initiated by the Tribunal of Ministers concerning the Almasri case are based on this, given that according to the rules prescribed by Law no. 237 of 20 December 2012, the Minister could not have avoided executing the request for arrest and therefore by delaying the acts within his competence, with the aim of bringing about the release of Almasri, he would have committed the offences of both omission of official acts and aiding and abetting.
It is to be imagined that some role, if only by omission, was also played by the Italian security services, which depend directly on Palazzo Chigi, in the ‘volatilization’ of Artem Uss, a Russian businessman arrested in Italy on 17 October 2022 at Malpensa airport on a warrant from the US authorities on charges of smuggling military technology and money laundering.
As soon as the Court of Appeals in Milan ordered home detention with an electronic bracelet for him, pending the decision on his extradition to the United States, Uss managed to escape from house arrest.
The reason why all these cases have been settled in tarallucci e vino is obviously political and has nothing to do with the latinorum flaunted on various occasions by the Azzeccagarbugli of Via Arenula.
In the case of Abedini, Almasri and Uss, it was a matter of avoiding the possible retaliation of criminal regimes that could make up for the affront suffered by Italian citizens, as Iran made very clear with the arrest of Cecilia Sala.

The Kusnetzov case and the ambiguity of the Italian government

In the case of Sehrii Kusnetzov, one cannot expect retaliation on the part of the government in Kyiv, but one should expect some scruples on the part of the Italian government, considering that the act of which the former Ukrainian agent is accused is an entirely legitimate action against the aggressor state, precisely because it is aimed at reducing its military potential, hitting its fundamental channel of financing, and not at depriving the Russian civilian population or that of Russia’s trading partners of indispensable and non-replaceable goods.
If the accusation against Kusnetzov were well-founded, he would deserve a monument as a hero of resistance and freedom in Kyiv, no less than in Rome and Berlin, not a trial for the destruction of the symbol of ignoble German and European prostitution to Kremlin interests and power.
If the Italian government wanted to make it unequivocally clear which side it is on in this conflict, Minister Nordio would have to return the former Ukrainian agent to his country and not to the German authorities, from which he would presumably receive no more strident remonstrances than those received from the US after the USSR and Abedini cases.
But we realise that it would be too clear a message for a government that, with the help of a literally indecent camp-Larghist opposition on the Ukrainian dossier, prefers to continue to move on the edge of equivocation, hypocrisy and contradiction, between a para-willing Meloni and a Salvini as usual at the Kremlin’s orders and guarantor of the executive’s Putin appeasement.
We should save Private Kusnetzov, but Nordio, who could (under Articles 697, 708 and 718 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, refusing extradition), will not.