Orlandi-Gregori case, the commission of inquiry begins. De Priamo: “We want to shine a light on the truth”
Pietro Orlandi: "There would be three leads to investigate further, there are important clues"
ROME – The Bicameral commission of inquiry into the events of Emanuela Orlandi and Mirella Gregori, the two girls who disappeared in Rome between May and June 1983 and never again, began at Palazzo San Macuto found. Forty-one years after the events, twenty deputies and twenty senators will try to shed light on the two unsolved cases that have crossed the history of our country. The commission will examine documents, recordings, wiretaps and reports and will hear several witnesses.
Today the family members were summoned, who asked Parliament to take the cases into its own hands: Mirella’s sister, Antonietta Gregori, Emanuela’s sisters, Cristina, Federica and Natalina, and the brother, Pietro Orlandi. Emanuela Orlandi, Vatican citizen, passed away on 22 June 1983 at the age of 15. That afternoon he went to Piazza Sant’Apollinare, to the music school, which he left earlier than usual. Mirella Gregori, also 15 years old, disappeared a few days earlier, on May 7, 1983, after receiving a phone call inviting her to come down.
“Mirella Gregori and Emanuela Orlandi are two girls and two stories that for us have equal dignity, even if the Orlandi story has had great coverage in the media. But here we are in a commission of investigation, we are not a TV program. We have to do the maximum to shine the light of truth on this matter”, said the senator of the Brothers of Italy, Andrea De Priamo.
MIRELLA’S SISTER: LAST BEACH COMMISSION, MY HEART IN YOUR HANDS
“The family is grateful” to the bicameral commission: “Finally someone is interested in my sister’s story. For us it is the last resort, I put my heart in your hands”. It is the heartfelt appeal of Maria Antonietta Gregori, sister of Mirella, kidnapped on May 7th 41 years ago and never found again. Today he is at Palazzo San Macuto for the first session of the parliamentary commission of inquiry and here he recalled the first moments of that terrible affair: “She was tricked down from home and never returned. There are some points that they have not been examined, there have been characters, misdirections, jackals, anonymous letters and people who have changed their opinion”.
MIRELLA’S SISTER: START FROM SCRATCH, SPLIT FROM ORLANDI CASE
“I believe we need to start from scratch and this time separate the case of Mirella Gregori from that of Emanuela Orlandi. If there are common points during the commission they will emerge”, he explained. “Before her disappearance it was said that my sister was seen with a boy, a blond man, who she also goes back to Sonia’s bar under the house. The boy from the aperitifs was called, and seen talking to my sister about a month before. It could therefore be a feminicide, at the time there wasn’t much talk about it”, Mirella Gregori’s sister said. Who then recalled: “My mother was highly speculative about the hypothesis of white trafficking, in that period many girls disappeared, more or less the same age as them. They are all hypotheses.” For this reason, he concluded, “I ask us to start from scratch and examine everything that has not been examined”.
PIETRO ORLANDI: THREE TRACKS TO FIND OUT MORE, IMPORTANT CLUES
There would be “three leads” on Emanuela Orlandi, who disappeared on 22 June 1983 at the age of 15, which “in my opinion deserve an in-depth investigation that no one has ever done” from the bicameral commission of inquiry. This was said by brother Pietro Orlandi, heard today by parliamentarians gathered in San Macuto. “There are some important facts that have never been explored in depth, despite having reported them to Diddi”, the Vatican promoter of justice and owner of the file on Orlandi opened in January last year after some requests presented by the family of the Vatican town. “I brought here the exact copy of the documents that I gave to Diddi when I was heard last year and I gave the same copy to the Rome Prosecutor’s Office”, Pietro Orlandi informed the parliamentarians of the commission, to which he added : “Since other things have emerged over the past year, I have made a file with some facts that have emerged, which are important in my opinion. There are recent facts which, if explored in depth, can allow us to make important steps forward. There are some clues with truly important findings”.
Emanuela’s brother then went into detail: “There are three situations that start from 2012. One concerns the magistrate who was in charge of the investigation, Doctor Capaldo, who had in 2012 a meeting with the emissaries of the Vatican, the head of the Vatican Gendarmerie Domenico Giani and his deputy Alessandrini, later called the famous ‘negotiation’. They also admitted to having been there.” On this “there was a sort of admission by the Vatican that it was aware of some facts. So I hope that magistrate Capaldo is one of the first to be heard together with Giani and Alessandrini who are Italian citizens”.
“The other lead – Pietro Orlandi said again – is that of London, regarding the famous expenses that the Vatican would have claimed for Emanuela that the following day they were considered false and ridiculous and no one followed up again. In this track there are some important elements that I have continued over the course of these years, which have led me to facts and documents that deserve real in-depth analysis. I brought here an entire memorial, with documents and letters between Cardinal Poletti and the undersecretary in London relating to this fact”.
The third lead is that of “the WhatsApp messages, which I received a few years ago, between two close people to Pope Francis on confidential telephones of the Holy See”. These messages “talk about Emanuela’s documents, they say that they are important, that they need to be photocopied, they talk about ground penetrating radar, about how to pay grave robbers who cannot be paid cleanly. These are two people who were part of the Cosea office, Francesca Immacolata Chaouqui and Monsignor Balda. This is a particular office that Pope Francis had established in 2013 to take care of the critical issues that existed in the Vatican and this sort of message arose between these two people because they had found documents relating to Emanuela, a chest containing things belonging to Emanuela. They also told me where this chest would be located, stored in Santa Maria Maggiore. These are things I said to Diddi when I was heard last year, asking that Francesca Immacolata Chaouqui, who had given me the screenshots of these messages, be heard as soon as possible. But she still hasn’t been called up for a year now”, concluded Pietro Orlandi.