rigorousintuition.ca

A former senior government official also revealed that allegations of abuse at the orphanages had been presented to the country’s then president, General Ramalho Eanes, in the 1980s.

Former secretary of state for families Teresa Costa Macedo, who presented the evidence to Ramalho Eanes and sent a dossier to police that was later lost, said she received anonymous threats by phone and post.

“They said they would kill me, flay me and a lot of other things,” she said.

Stephen Morgan wrote:The ambassador to UNESCO will presumably be Ritto, Dutroux's friend.

Stephen Morgan wrote:The ambassador to UNESCO will presumably be Ritto, Dutroux's friend.

Jeff wrote:I can find links claiming Ritto and Dutroux were "closely linked," but that's it. It's probably reasonable enough to presume a connection, but what's the evidence?

"Condemned" is the most commonly used word on the front pages of Portugal's newspapers today, after the country's longest ever criminal trial ended with a damning verdict.

Six men were given jail sentences of between six and 18 years for sexually abusing children.

But the media coverage of Friday's verdict also made much of the fact that all six men remain at liberty, after their lawyers immediately submitted appeals against the decision.

...

...the sluggish pace of court proceedings in Portugal could lead to the statute of limitations being applied in this case if there is a series of appeals.

"The trial alone took six years [but] normally the appeal phase takes much more," he said.

jingofever wrote:

Jeff wrote:I can find links claiming Ritto and Dutroux were "closely linked," but that's it. It's probably reasonable enough to presume a connection, but what's the evidence?

As far as I can tell the claim originates in an article by Oswald LeWinter. I don't know anything about him.

"LeWinter is an example of a brilliant mind gone to the bad," former CIA counter-terrorist expert Vincent Cannistraro said in a conversation about the man two years ago. "His father was a professor at Columbia University. He grew up in a New York City suburb with all the privileges. It is amazing how far he has fallen."

Beyond this, however, facts about Mr LeWinter are hard to come by. When I dealt with him in 1996 - spending a week with him at his Mojave Desert home in California - for a Channel 4 documentary that never made it into production, the psychological warfare he waged against me left me uncertain about almost everything concerning him.

Spy buffs know Mr LeWinter as a former CIA operative. A Vienna tabloid last week quoted Rodney Stich, author of Disavow - a CIA Saga of Betrayal, as saying that Mr LeWinter worked for more than 30 years for the CIA under the codename "Razine"; he was recruited in the Sixties, during the Vietnam war, as a college professor, and acted first as an informer on students.

Mr LeWinter told me he had become involved with the CIA while a college professor. "I was invited to go on a lecture tour to eastern Europe, to talk about Shakespeare," he said. "The CIA approached me. I became one of their fish." He claimed he had become a deputy director of the agency under the late James Angleton, its legendarily paranoid counter-espionage expert. But a former Washington DC police intelligence chief pointed out flaws in his account of his CIA career that cast serious doubt on this and other claims.

His personal life is also hard to pin down. He told me he had married an heiress to the Humble Oil fortune with whom he had two sons - one now a successful executive, the other a beach bum - but the marriage had foundered and in the Eighties he married a German woman, an executive at the German software firm SAP. They have a daughter.

He told me that from 1979 he worked for the CIA at Itac, the Brussels- based intelligence coordinating arm of Nato. In the Eighties he was arrested and convicted of drug dealing in Germany. His admission that he served a prison term in Germany - for moving amphetamines from Libya to the US - is qualified by his insistence that the operation was one of Oliver North's secret missions. It was after this miscarriage of justice, he said, that he became a renegade.

You probably don't know the name. You may recall, however, that there was a fellow who tried to sell a forged document to Mohammed Al Fayed. The document, which came at a very hefty price, allegedly revealed the ghastly truth behind the deaths of Al Fayed's son and Princess Diana. LeWinter was the man behind the scam; he was caught, and did time.

During the Vietnam war, LeWinter was a professor at U.C. Berkley -- an expert on Shakespeare, as I recall. He befriended at least one leader of the anti-war movement. At the same time, he was relaying info to the feds. In the years since, he has claimed to be either a general or an intelligence operative. Reportedly, he was friendly with CIA man George Cave.

Using the name "Razin," he provided researchers with "inside" info on the October Surprise scandal. Later, before a congressional committee, he admitted that he had been lying. Although the October Surprise story was confirmed by more reliable sources -- including French intelligence head Alexandre de Marenches, Russian prime minister Sergei V. Stepashin, Israeli secret agent Ari Ben-Menashe, former Iranian president Abolhassan Bani-Sadr, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, and former Israeli prime minister Yitshak Shamir -- LeWinter's odd games deep-sixed official inquiry into the event.

He is, in short, a very strange man. He now writes for a somewhat loopy (okay, very loopy) conspiracy site, where he has turned out stories with names like "Bush-Cheney Cabal: Pedophilia, Arms Dealing, Murder." His Moon piece seems fairly good. Even so, when dealing with a shady fellow like LeWinter, caveat lector!

Sometimes you can tell a conspiracy by the high grade of disinformation that accrues about it, including the number and quality of shadowy "renegade insiders" eager to step up, speak out and muddy the waters. ... Former CIA agent Oswald LeWinter tried to sell to Mohammed Al Fayed apparently forged documents that spelling out in big, block letters an alleged DIA-MI6 assassination plot. And it may even be true, but to showcase the truth within the framework of a lie is to strip its consideration of credibility. (Regarding LeWinter, Al Fayed's attorney Mark Zaid told CNN six years ago that he "was responsible for disseminating a lot of the - what's been deemed disinformation about [the October Surprise]. He has shown up in allegations that Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme was murdered, he has shown up involving allegations of the bombing of Pam Am 103, and then he showed up in this latest endeavor of his. He is quite a man of mystery.")