The Italian writer Roberto Saviano, author of the successful novel Gomorra, has once again sat on the defendant’s bench in a defamation trial against a member of the Italian Government. This time he has been sued by the current Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Infrastructure, the leader of the League Matteo Salvini, for linking him to the mafia in a publication on his social networks in 2018.
At that time, Salvini held the position of Interior Minister of the first executive of Giuseppe Conte, and was focused on a strict policy against immigration. After some members of the local clans identified themselves at a rally in Rosarno, one of the places with the greatest presence of the ‘Ndrangheta, the Calabrian organized crime, the writer called him “minister of mala vita”, a term that in Italy it is used to refer to the mafia.
“I feel proud to be accused in this criminal proceeding because it gives me the opportunity to record before the court that we are not going to allow party leaders and government ministers to impede criticism,” Salviano declared at the end of the first hearing of the process, for which he could face up to three years in prison. After the first, merely formal hearing, the writer wanted to defend his attacks on Salvini, accusing him of using southern Italy as a “repository for easy votes” and of using gypsies or immigrants as scapegoats while ignoring the deepest problems of the southern regions.
It is not the only trial of this type that Saviano faces, with an escort for years due to threats from the Camorra. In November another very similar one began, this time at the request of the Italian Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni, who sued him for having called her a “bastard” on a television program. It was two years ago, when he was still in opposition, on the set of a retransmission of the television channel La7. The writer, shocked by the death of a Guinean baby in a shipwreck in the Mediterranean, exploded at the anti-immigration ideas of Meloni and Salvini and said: “All the rubbish thrown against the NGOs, at the They call sea taxis or cruise ships. I can only say: bastards. To Meloni and Salvini, bastards, how can you? ”, He assured the viewers.
He has also been denounced by the current Minister of Culture, Gennaro Sangiuliano, who is demanding 250,000 euros from him for having said that his promotion to this portfolio was motivated by having been a servile journalist before the right. Until recently, Sangiuliano was news director of the second chain of RAI, public television, and his positions in favor of the conservative parties were well known. In addition, he called him a “mediocre” journalist and a “Putin biographer.”
“Today I am defending myself against the Deputy Prime Minister, while I have an ongoing trial with the Prime Minister and a civil lawsuit filed by the Minister of Culture. Three ministers of the same government take anyone who dares to criticize them to court”, lamented Saviano, who considers that Italy is “the only case in Western democracies in which the executive branch asks the judiciary to define the perimeter within of which criticism is possible. And he has warned: “Exposing the constant manipulation of information by these political representatives is an inalienable right that I will defend.”
