The renowned Italian anti-mafia writer Roberto Saviano was sentenced this Thursday by a Court in Rome to pay 1,000 euros ($1,054) for having defamed the current prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, whom he called a “bastard.” The figure is well below the 75,000 that the president’s lawyer had requested and the 10,000 from the prosecutor’s office.
Saviano’s defense lawyer, Antonio Nobile, had requested acquittal “because the act does not exist or does not constitute a crime” and announced that he will appeal this sentence.
“Losing today is an example of what will happen tomorrow, it leads us even further to understand the situation we live in, with an executive branch that constantly tries to intimidate anyone who answers its lies. Today I am proud to have faced this trial,” so the writer Roberto Saviano expressed himself after leaving the court.
During the last hearing of this process that began after Meloni’s complaint, before becoming prime minister, the writer stated that this trial was born from “the words of criticism of those who have made fear and cynicism their policy.”
Meloni’s lawyer, Luca Libra, pointed out that “bastard is not a criticism but always an insult, even in the dictionary it is always a derogatory term.”
The trial began in November of last year after the complaint of the far-right Meloni, who at that time had only been in the Italian Government for a month.
The dispute between the intellectual and the politician began when he, in a television program on December 7, 2020, denounced the alleged political use that the country’s extreme right made of the phenomenon of immigration in the central Mediterranean.
“You must have remembered all the garbage thrown against the NGOs, which they call ‘sea taxis’ or ‘cruise ships’. All I can say is: bastards. To Meloni and (Matteo) Salvini, bastards, how can you? “he said during the program.
The writer, under police protection for his books in which he reveals mafia mechanisms, such as the successful “Gomorrah” (2006), considers this trial against him an attack on freedom of expression.
On October 3, Saviano denounced the Government’s attacks against the judiciary and asserted that, with this ruling, the judge “must establish whether or not it is possible to exercise the right to criticism” in Italy.
On the other hand, in February 2023 the trial between Saviano and Salvini also began after the writer, criticizing his immigration policy, called him “minister of Mala Vita”, a term used in Italy to refer to the mafia.
The anti-mafia reference was also denounced by Meloni’s Minister of Culture, Gennaro Sangiliano, after he said of him that “his only merit was serving the right” during his past career as a journalist and news director of the second television channel. public RAI.
In May the Court of Rome ruled in favor of Saviano in this case and exonerated him from paying the compensation claimed by the minister.