One fine morning I was strolling down the streets of Florence, Italy, on my way to buy a nice frothy cappuccino, when my cell phone rang. A voice, speaking Italian, said: “This is the police. Where are you? We are coming to get you.”

Thus began the bizarre nightmare chronicled in my nonfiction book, The Monster of Florence, written with Italian journalist Mario Spezi (and currently being made into a movie starring George Clooney). The book tells the story of Italy’s most notorious serial killer, known only as the Monster of Florence, who murdered young lovers in the Florentine hills and was never caught. The case is one of the strangest and most compelling in all the annals of world crime. Following that phone call, the police did indeed come and get me. They hauled me in for an interrogation before the powerful district attorney of Perugia, Judge Giuliano Mignini. I was grilled for hours without an attorney or interpreter and accused of a number of crimes, including being an accessory to murder, before being asked to leave Italy.

Mignini is the same district attorney in charge of the infamous Amanda Knox case. He accused Amanda, an American exchange student, and two others of participating in the sadistic, drug-fuelled sex murder of her British roommate in the Italian town of Perugia. The investigation, trial and conviction of Knox has been heavily criticized in Italy and the United States as being grossly unfair and in violation of both Italian and European Union judicial and evidentiary standards.

Now the Committee to Protect Journalists, a highly respected international organization defending the rights and lives of journalists around the world, has made public the results of their own, independent investigation into the actions of Mignini and the police, prosecutors, and judges in Perugia, Italy.

Their conclusions are shocking. The report details what appears to be an organized campaign to harass, intimidate, and physically threaten Italian and American journalists covering the case. CPJ discovered that in at least on case police in Perugia assaulted a journalist who had criticized Mignini, trumped up charges against him, and then tried to get him certified “insane”—all with Mignini’s knowledge and cooperation.

The CPJ investigation also detailed how Perugian authorities extended their harassment campaign into the United States, threatening American journalists, writers, and newspapers with criminal charges in a gross attempt to extend Italian criminal laws on to American soil and interfere with the freedoms we enjoy in our own country.

The Committee to Protect Journalists was so concerned with their findings that yesterday they sent a strong letter of protest to the President of the Italian Republic, asking for action to end this abuse and calling on him to take steps to protect journalists in Perugia.

The letter reads like a horror novel. It is unbelievable that something like this could occur in a Western European country.

You can read the letter here, posted on my website.