Early one morning last week three young Italian women set out from a tourist camp in the Abruzzo hills to climb Morrone mountain. The Abruzzo region, containing one of the most spectacular national parks in Italy, is a favourite summer resort. Its peaceful, rural tranquillity contrasts with the rhythms of overcrowded, over-cemented urban Italy.
Ms Diana Olivetti (23), her 21year-old sister Silvia and a friend, Ms Tamara Gobbo, had often taken such hill-walking holidays together. At about 10.30 a.m. and halfway up the mountain, they stopped a passing shepherd to ask directions. Shepherds are nothing strange in the Abruzzo hills, where sheep wander freely but are always accompanied by a shepherd who keeps an eye on their whereabouts and protects against stealing.
This particular shepherd spoke good Italian and offered to accompany the women on to the right mountain path. Within a quarter of an hour, however, the women became suspicious of the direction their self-appointed guide was taking. When they protested, he pulled out a pistol and threatened them.
When Silvia attempted to remonstrate, she was shot in the chest and shoulder. She fell to the ground and feigned death. As she lay bleeding, Silvia saw the shepherd rape and kill her sister Diana and also murder her friend. Despite her wounds, she later managed to struggle down the mountainside, reaching safety at five o'clock that afternoon.
Silvia's experience is the ultimate nightmare. The rape and murders read like the script of a horror movie. However, this grim tragedy has not only prompted anger and indignation, it has also sparked off an ongoing political debate. The "shepherd", you see, was called Aliyebi Gostivar Hasani, a 23-year-old Macedonian illegal immigrant - given the low wages of a shepherd, this is nowadays a job often done by illegal immigrants.
This particular immigrant, who has been in Italy at least five years, already had a criminal record for horse theft.
Furthermore, the Abruzzo killings come in a summer when police have had to stage beach controls in Rimini, where a spate of violent crime has been attributed to immigrants.
Italy's centre-right opposition has not been slow to cry scandal, arguing that both episodes highlight the complete inability of the centre-left government to handle the immigrant problem.
Worse still for the Prime Minister, Mr Romano Prodi, last weekend the new Albanian government of Mr Fatos Nano asked Italy to delay the repatriation of approximately 10,000 Albanian "boat people". They arrived last March in the wake of civic unrest provoked by the collapse of the pyramid banking schemes.
Originally, this latest wave of Albanian boat people was due for repatriation by August 31st. Given the relative instability of the Albanian government, it is now expected that, following a cabinet meeting today, the Italian government will extend the boat people permits by a further two months.
Even as the government and opposition continued to argue about how to best deal with illegal immigrants, a further dramatic reminder of the problem came with the clandestine arrival of 450 immigrants last Sunday.
The exhausted and half-starved immigrants, including Kurds from Iraq and Turkey as well as Sri Lankans and Bangladeshis, had been on an overcrowded cargo boat since leaving a Turkish port early in August.
The different events of the last week highlight the urgent need for new legislation, which has been blocked in parliament since February, snowed under by 500 amendments.
That legislation is intended to help control the flow of immigrants, not only identifying economic migrants from political refugees, illegal immigrants from legal ones but also speeding up repatriation and expulsion processes.
While parliament struggles with the immigration bill, it is worth reflecting on Mr Prodi's words this week: "Looking to the future, perhaps the biggest problem facing European society is how to absorb immigrants."