22:47, 30 December 2006

Mario Scaramella refused to be granted home arrest

Mario Scaramella, Italian lawyer, will spend the New Year holiday in the Roman prison of "Regina Koeli". Today, the court has refused Scaramella lawyers to change the measure of restraint from arrest in prison to home arrest, reports NEWSru. This decision is connected with the fact that, in the opinion of the law enforcement agencies, there is a risk that the accused may destroy certain evidence.

On Thursday, in the course of a 6-hour interrogation, Scaramella provided information to the effect that Alexander Litvinenko had recently come to Rome three times and visited the palace of Saint-Makuto where the parliamentary commission on investigation of the activity of the former USSR KGB in Italy was sitting, but every time Senator Paolo Guzzanti, a well-known journalist and chair of the commission, refused to hear him out.

According to Scaramella, Litvinenko was one of the sources of evidence on the ostensibly existing plan of poisoning Scaramella himself and Senator Guzzanti.