Innocent showing no courage about the Italian (9)

I believe the answer is:

guiltless

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'innocent' is the definition.
(I know that innocent can be written as guiltless)

'no courage about the italian' is the wordplay.
'no courage' becomes 'gutless' (I can't explain this - if you can you should believe this answer much more).
'about' means one lot of letters goes inside another.
'the italian' becomes 'il' ('the' in Italian).
'gutless' enclosing 'il' is 'GUILTLESS'.

'showing' is the link.

Can you help me to learn more?

(Another definition for guiltless that I've seen is " Innocent".)

I've seen this clue in the Sydney Morning Herald.

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