The Montesi Affair
Jt is now almost a year and a half since the death of Wilma Montesi, and the opening of a scandal which spread from whispers about drugs and orgiastic parties, to allegations of murder, to suggestions that the Italian Government was con- niving at the suppression of evidence, and then—by a final extension which the Communists in particular hurried to make —to talk of the moral rottenness of the Italian ruling classes. Any further delays in dragging out the truth about this sordid affair brings the Italian Government under renewed suspicion. But suspicion and anxiety must not be allowed to combine with ignorance of Italian legal procedure in such a way as to obscure the facts. The most important fact at the moment is that Dr. Sepe, the examining magistrate who has been in charge of the case, has concluded his ,task. His submission of the papers to the Public Prosecutor is not a shelving of the case; it represents the completion of a due process of Italian law. The contents of Dr. Sepe's report have not of course been published, but if it supplies evidence on which to base criminal charges (from murder down through man- slaughter to the criminal witholding of aid from a dying person) it will now be for the Public Prosecutor to act. His action may take the form of actual arrests on criminal charges, or of the issue of writs (mandatodi comparizione a piede libero) which have no equivalent in English law but which' require attendance before a court and the answering of questions. If the Public Prosecutor fails to take action, Dr. Sepe's powers and responsibilities revive. He cannot be shelved against his will. But the belief is growing in Italy that action will at last be taken as soon as Dr. Sepe's bulky report is studied. Every- one in Western Europe—except of course the Communists, whose propaganda is aided by every delay—will be dismayed if these hopes prove illusory.
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