Italy outraged at killing of heroic police dog ‘given food laced with nails'
Bruno, a seven-year-old, 88-kilogram (195-pound) bloodhound, was found dead on Friday morning in his shed in southern Taranto.
Advertisement
His trainer, Arcangelo Caressa, said he had been fed bits of dog food laced with nails.
Bits of dog food laced with nails that were fed to a police dog Bruno, killing him, his trainer Arcangelo Caressa said (Arcangelo Caressa/AP)
In an interview on Tuesday, Mr Caressa said he suspected the killing was revenge against him — not Bruno — for his volunteer animal rescue work.
'It was deliberately a horrific act to cause the dog intense suffering, because feeding him bites filled with nails means tearing apart his insides, tearing apart his esophagus and internal organs and causing excruciating pain,' Mr Caressa told The Associated Press.
Premier Giorgia Meloni, who was photographed with Bruno after one of his heroic rescues, said that his slaughter was 'vile, cowardly, unacceptable'.
Advertisement
Legislator Michael Vittoria Brambilla, a long-time animal rights activist, filed a criminal complaint with prosecutors under a new law that she helped push through stiffening penalties for anyone who kills or mistreats an animal.
The editor of the Il Giornale daily, Vittorio Feltri, voiced outrage, saying Bruno had done more civic good in Italy than most Italian citizens.
Mr Caressa said that he had told prosecutors that he suspected that he was the ultimate target of Bruno's killers, and that Bruno was killed 'to get to me'.
Mr Caressa runs a volunteer public animal rescue organisation, Endas, that among other things rescues dogs from illegal dogfights.
Advertisement
He said the service used to be run by for-profit firms and said he suspected that his competitors were behind Bruno's killing.
'In recent months, we have received threats, acts of persecution, defamation and slander from certain individuals who have already been investigated in the past and are known to the judicial authorities, who have been trying in every way to take over this rescue service by despicable means,' Mr Caressa told The Associated Press.
Dog trainer Arcangelo Caressa holding his seven-year-old bloodhound Bruno (Claudia Aloisio/AP)
The new animal protection law, known as the Brambilla law, went into effect on July 1 and calls for up to four years in prison and a 60,000-euro (around £51,000) fine, with the stiffest penalties applied if the mistreatment is committed in front of children or is filmed and disseminated online.
Mr Feltri said that the penalty should be even greater than four years, saying animals must be respected 'especially when they behave heroically' as Bruno had.
Advertisement
Mr Caressa said that Bruno might have appeared clumsy and overweight, but was powerful, strong and dedicated to his job.
'He was a giant,' said Mr Caressa. 'When he went out on a search and you put his harness on, there was no one else like him.
'He would set off, smell the person we were looking for and run like a train until we found them.'
Officially, his record stands at nine people found – five people who were alive and four whose bodies were recovered, he said.
Advertisement
'But the motto for us rescuers is always the same: Bring the missing person home in any case, because there is always someone among their relatives who is looking for that missing person,' he said.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Independent
6 minutes ago
- The Independent
Diane Abbott may not be right – but is she entirely wrong on race?
Diane Abbott has been suspended by the Labour Party… again. They have said that they're taking 'incredibly seriously' an interview she gave to James Naughtie's Reflections programme on BBC Radio 4 conducted back in May, but only aired yesterday. During the interview, the veteran Labour MP said she did not look back with regret on comments she previously made in 2023 in a letter to The Observer, in which she was seen to be downplaying the discrimination received by groups such as the Jewish, Irish and Traveller Communities, by comparing it to that experienced by Black and Brown people. She had written that what they suffer from is 'prejudice' – which although similar to racism, isn't the same – and said that people use the two words as though they are interchangeable. After the outrage, she apologised for any anguish caused by her remarks and claimed that her letter had been a 'first draft' and a mistake. She was ordered to undergo an online two hour e-training module which was apparently a two-hour antisemitism awareness course. Her comments concerning the Irish and Traveller communities were not addressed. I suspect Abbott had been rather keen to clarify the comments in the Naughtie interview and didn't anticipate this reaction from Labour HQ. She has posted the excerpt from the interview that is causing all of the controversy to her X account in which she can be heard saying: 'Clearly there must be a difference between racism which is about colour, and other types of racism because you can see a Traveller or a Jewish person walking down the street. You don't know… but if you see a Black person walking down the street, you see straightaway that they're Black. They are different types of racism.' She added: 'I just think that it's silly to try and claim that racism which is about skin colour is the same as other types of racism.' This is a salient point. There's clearly a marked difference in how a Black person or person of colour suffers racism compared to someone who is 'white passing'. When there were riots in Southport last year, racist thugs didn't double-check the identity of the Black or Brown people they were attacking – they worked solely on the basis of skin colour. Naughtie pressed further, saying the effect is 'the same if you are, going to a synagogue on a Saturday morning and you have to have guards outside because some people might come along and want to insult you or even throw things at you'. 'That's pretty much the same as the kind of thing you describe in your book is happening to you as a Black person,' he said. 'The fact is one is a person of colour and one isn't, is neither here nor there. If you suffered it, it's still damaging.' Abbott replied: 'It is here, because you can spot that person of colour from hundreds of yards away. That is what is different.' I understand what she means – but I see why the second point she made could be construed as dismissive. The fact is, if you go to the synagogue on Shabbat and are Jewish – and have white skin – that is not going to protect you from any antisemitic attack. We've not been able to have a grown-up conversation around race in the UK for quite some time now. For me personally, I felt a significant shift around the time of the Brexit vote, Trump's first victory across the pond and Corbyn becoming leader of the Labour Party. This is when, instead of being able to simply speak about my own lived experiences, I was being called upon to compare them to others – forced to participate in some sort of 'oppression Olympics' which I hadn't trained or signed up for. I've always believed that intersectionality is the way to best understand what other people are going through. You can draw on some of your own experiences, look at the similarities and listen when they explain the difference in order to be able to empathise. What Abbott is trying to highlight here, however clumsily, is assimilation. I know many people from Jewish families who have Anglicised names and this was a deliberate choice, but it's important to point out not all of us can do this successfully. Despite many people from the Caribbean community (which I am from) having Anglicised names, it makes no difference to the racism we face. In some cases, it only delays the inevitable. I've heard plenty of stories of our people turning up to a job interview and witnessing the palpable disappointment of the panel when they realise 'Jason Davies' is actually a Black man. I deliberated long and hard on what to name my son, and in the end, I decided to give him an unmistakeably African name so people knew what they were getting – and there would be no surprises. My friend Iain decided to give his daughter an Anglicised name so that she could at least get her foot in the door, knowing that sometimes CVs and applications are thrown away just because you have a Black-sounding name. This is how early we start to worry about these things. But my experience is also different in other ways. I don't have to sit listening to people crack racist jokes because they don't realise I'm Black – that is obvious to them – yet my Jewish friends have had to listen to tasteless Holocaust jokes, because no one realises they're Jewish. Racism is often doled out due to perception. Gary Lineker, for example, has discussed being racially abused as a child because of his dark skin, despite being white; yet Meghan Markle has spoken about not suffering the level of racism growing up as she does now because people didn't realise she was half Black. Orthodox Jews are identifiable from the religious attire they wear in the same way that some Muslims are (those who wear thobes or hijabs.) But in dire circumstances, such as threat to life, these things can be removed. In Islam there is something called Taqiyya (annoyingly misused on social media) which allows you to conceal your faith in times of danger and persecution. Black people can't do this. If only Stephen Lawrence or Anthony Walker had been able to run around a corner and remove their skin in order to save their lives. The GRT (Gypsy, Roma and Traveller) community may able to walk down the street as individuals and blend in to mainstream society in a way that I can't, but that doesn't negate the horrendous levels of discrimination they face within the education system, the legislative changes and even just trying to have a drink or a meal. They are refused service and suffer crude racism in a way Abbott confidently asserts doesn't happen as overtly to Black people anymore. She said, 'they may think the same thoughts, but they know it's not acceptable to express them.' To my mind, Starmer has either made a serious mistake here, or the disrespect he has repeatedly shown Abbott and the wider Black community since the start of his leadership is set to continue. His failure to address the findings in the Forde Report (which was commissioned to examine the level of anti-Black racism and Islamophobia in the party) resulted in many leaving the party altogether. Some found a home elsewhere, while other MPs disengaged with politics altogether. The blind loyalty afforded to the Labour Party over the years since the overtly racist 1964 Smethick campaign where the Tories used the slogan: 'If you want a n****r for a neighbour, vote Labour' no longer exists. Now, a new generation of voters – some of whom are going to be as young as 16 – are looking at how Starmer's Labour operates a hierarchy of racism; how he gave a speech on immigration that many compared to Enoch Powell and then stood by his comments that the UK risked becoming an 'island of strangers'. Downing Street said Starmer 'completely rejected' suggestions he echoed Powell. In the words of Professor Gus John, if he didn't know what he was invoking, he is simply not fit to be prime minister. Racism manifests itself in different ways. There is nothing wrong with pointing this out. And unless we are able to have difficult conversations around the subject – which includes allowing people to make honest mistakes – we will never even come close to starting to resolve it. But maybe some people just don't want to.
The Independent
6 minutes ago
- The Independent
Britain is ‘not safe' and critically underprepared for war, warns former Nato chief
British people are 'not safe' and describing the country as underprepared for war is an 'understatement', a former Nato chief has warned parliament. Lord Robertson of Port Ellen gave a scathing assessment of the UK's readiness for war following a year examining defence policy for the government 's Strategic Defence Review, released early last month. 'Over the years, we have allowed our forces and our defences to become hollowed out,' the former Nato secretary general told the House of Lords today (18 July). 'When we say in the report that we are 'underprepared', it is an understatement. We don't have the ammunition, the training, the people, the spare parts, the logistics, and we don't have the medical capacity [for] high intensity warfare.'
The Independent
6 minutes ago
- The Independent
Jenrick urges Farage to sack right-hand man Zia Yusuf over antisemitic post row
Nigel Farage is facing calls to sack his right-hand man Zia Yusuf after the senior Reform UK figure said that a member of his team "accidentally pressed like" on an antisemitic post which attacked the wife of Tory MP Robert Jenrick. The former Reform chairman, who now heads the party's Doge unit, has apologised for the incident, which comes after an anonymous X user posted a video that appeared to show Mr Yusuf liking a tweet which said: 'Reminder that Jenrick is a traitorous Zogbot with a Jewish wife and family. I'm sure it's unrelated that he imported infinite brown savages to rape our women and children.' Zogbot is a derogatory term for a Zionist. The anonymous account that shared the screen recording of Mr Yusuf's interaction with the post described it as 'absolutely horrifying antisemitism.' Since last summer, likes on X have been privatised, so that only the liker and the poster can see them, rather than a wider audience. In response, Mr Jenrick said he 'called bull****' and pointed out that Mr Yusuf had been calling him a 'traitor' for the previous 48 hours over the Afghan data breach in what had become an ugly spat. The shadow justice minister claimed 'the mask has slipped' and urged Reform to sever ties with Mr Yusuf. After critics of the former Reform UK chairman picked up the criticism to demand he is sacked by Mr Farage, he responded with an apology. In his statement he said: 'One of the team who post to my X account accidentally pressed like on an awful antisemitic tweet earlier today. I apologise for this.' He added: 'The post also refers to 'brown savages', and is equally racist against me. Clearly it was not intentional. 'The amount of antisemitism and racism on this platform is spiralling out of control, and I hope that changes soon.' But responding, Mr Jenrick claimed he did not believe Mr Yusuf's explanation. In a post directed at Mr Yusuf he said: 'I call bull****. You've spent the last 48 hours calling me a 'traitor' for not drawing attention to a leaked spreadsheet with our special forces and MI6 officers' names on. 'But we're meant to believe this tweet attacking me as a traitor for having a Jewish wife and family was liked 'accidentally' by 'one of the team.' You must think we're all thick. 'No. The mask has slipped. Likes are private. You thought nobody would ever know. Unfortunately for you, the racist account who posted the tweet and could see the likes exposed you. Reform should give you the boot.' Mr Yusuf has been a controversial figure in Reform after he helped fund their general election campaign before being brought in as chairman to modernise the party. He was blamed by supporters of Rupert Lowe for the Great Yarmouth MP being ousted from Reform but had the full backing of Mr Farage. Mr Yusuf then temporarily resigned from the party after having a spat with Reform's recently elected Runcorn MP Sarah Pochin after she asked a question in PMQs calling for the burqa to be banned. He returned 24 hours later but was replaced as chairman by longterm Farage ally Dr David Bull and instead agreed to head their Doge unit, modelled on the one Elon Musk created for Donald Trump, which aims to find savings and cut costs in the councils Reform won control of last May.
