Swiss to open murder inquiry into triple Vatican deaths

[emad]

Cover-up allegations surrounding three killings involving the Pope's Swiss Guards are finally to be heard in court

Alex Duval Smith in Paris
Sunday January 9, 2005
The Observer

Seven years after a controversial triple killing within the Pope's Swiss Guards, a Swiss court is to open a murder inquiry.
The move - aimed at clearing the name of the officer held responsible, Cédric Tornay - follows years of resistance by the Vatican to shed light on the shooting, on 4 May, 1998, of Swiss Guards commander Alois Estermann and his wife.

The Holy See has always insisted that the couple were killed by Tornay, who then turned the gun on himself, because he was bitter at having been passed over for a medal.

High-profile French lawyer Jacques Vergès and his colleague, Luc Brossollet, acting for Tornay's mother, say that they will file the murder claim because 'we have faced years of stubborn deafness from the Vatican. Cédric Tornay was Swiss, so it is proper to bring the case before a court in Switzerland'.

The move comes amid a flurry of books on the killing, including Victor Guitard's L'Agent Secret du Vatican (published by Albin Michel), an extensive interview with Giovanni Saluzzo, a friend and former colleague of Tornay. He claims that Estermann was murdered after Vatican officials discovered that he had been a spy for the East German Stasi secret police in the 1980s.

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,1386153,00.html

[AlbizuX]

1. Vatican intrigue...

interesting...