Snuff films question
lewy
through Deja I couldn't find any discussion about this topic.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4070446,00.html
The original story broke in the U.S. because of a controvery regarding clips
being shown on Italian t.v. news. So, does anyone know what the outcome of
the investigation was and whether these were actual snuff films that were
being produced?
Keith Willis
An anonymous[1] search for the keywords 'n*cr*s p*d*' on google
returns about 56 hits, almost all of which simply parrot the press
release:
"The most gruesome was called..."
"The most appalling category was code-named..."
"El más horrible era el material bajo el código..."
"The most gruesome, police said, was coded..."
"The most gruesome, police said, was code-named..."
(Sheesh - journos must have an easy life when reporting such an
emotive story all they feel it necessary to do is quote a hand-out!)
I could find no substantive information regarding the outcome, charges
filed, etc. One would certainly expect to see at least one individual
from such a 'well publicised' case end up with a murder, manslaughter,
or conspiracy charge, if there were indeed deaths depicted. That does
not appear to have happened to date.
Keith "unsavoury research" Willis
1. I know they're probably not watching me, but I'm paranoid, ok?
--
Welcome to Folklore group of singing and dancing "AFU"
Nathan Tenny
As far as I can tell, we discussed this particular instance only briefly,
when the story first broke; at that time the hard-news content boiled down
to "child porn accidentally shown on Italian TV; media big shots lose jobs",
with allegations of snuff films in the catalogue of the busted child-porn
ring but no clear evidence.
Here's the post with which that thread started (sorry, long URL):
<http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&selm=elo7ts853sju4irpghi660a5ub60vs8v2g%404ax.com>
The more concrete allegations of snuff from the Grauniad story are, as far
as I can tell, new to AFU. Let's see what we've got here:
The identity of the suspect is revealed, with details, which would suggest
that the arrest and the gist of the allegations must be pretty sound---hard
to see how a newspaper could risk saying "Person X busted for distributing
snuff films" if there wasn't enough evidence of that fact to forestall a
libel suit. Especially in the UKoGBaNI, where libel laws are notoriously
strict.
However, those charges don't explicitly include the snuff allegations,
except in the indirect form "Italian investigators say..." A British
customs official reports having seen "sadistic" material, but makes it
clear that he and colleagues haven't actually seen anything that they were
confident was a snuff film.
The Italian sources seem to have given quite a lot of detail, including the
"code name", if you will, for the snuff videos ("Necros Pedo", Googling for
which yields some additional news coverage, but interestingly little detail
beyond the alleged existence of the films). There's also the excerpted
email exchange between a customer and distributor, which, if genuine, makes
it clear that the distributor claimed to be selling snuff films and that
the customer intended to be buying them, but also that the customer had
been disappointed in that regard by previous purchases.
I gotta think this is still kind of indeterminate. It seems pretty clear
that someone claimed to be selling snuff films and found customers; whether
the films actually existed and were as claimed is harder to know. On the
one hand, you have to think that defrauding the customer is easier and
safer than filming a murder. On the other hand, someone who's running a
commercial child-porn ring might not have the most highly developed sense
of prudent behavior.
It seems like court records should exist, and they might clear up a lot of
the details and help to separate fact from fraud from inference. However,
the distributor was arrested and presumably tried (or is he still awaiting
trial?) in Moscow; where does one find Russian court records?
NT
--
Nathan Tenny | Words I carry in my pocket, where they
Qualcomm, Inc., San Diego, CA | breed like white mice.
<nten...@qualcomm.com> | - Lawrence Durrell