Cospito-mafia row between FdI MPs and PD escalates

(ANSA) - ROME, FEB 3 - A massive row between two senior lawmakers for Premier Giorgia Meloni's right-wing Brothers of Italy (FdI) party and the Democratic Party (PD) related to the case of jailed anarchist Alfredo Cospito escalated on Friday with one of the MPs accusing the opposition centre-left group of "bowing" to the mafia.
    The PD, on the other hand, said it would sue the FdI lawmakers for defamation.
    Cospito has been on hunger strike for over 100 days to protest against the tough jail regime he is being held under, the 41 bis, which is usually reserved for mafia bosses.
    His case has sparked a wave of violent protests, threats and vandalism by anarchist groups.
    One of the FdI MPs, Giovanni Donzelli, who is a member of the Copasir parliamentary committee that oversees Italy's intelligence services, revealed in the Lower House this week that Cospito had talked to mafia bosses about getting the 41 bis abolished and that four PD lawmakers had visited him in jail.
    Andrea Delmastro Delle Vedove, the justice undersecretary with the portfolio for the penitentiary department and Donzelli's flatmate, was the source of the information.
    The PD is up in arms, demanding Delmastro and Donzelli quit for, among other things, revealing allegedly secret information.
    Justice Minister Carlo Nordio, however, has said that the information was sensitive but not classified.
    Delmastro fuelled the row on Friday by saying that the PD lawmakers had given in to Cospito's demand that they meet other people being held under the 41 bis, including two mafia bosses, as a condition for the encounter with him.
    "The PD will have to explain that bow to the mafiosi to the public," Delmastro said in an interview with local daily newspaper 'Il Biellese', based in his home town of Biella in Piedmont.
    The PD said it would take legal action against Delmastro and Donzelli for damaging "the honour of the PD parliamentarians and offending the history of a party that has had, and continues to have, the fight against organized crime and any form of terrorism as its founding value".
    The party said it hoped that Delmastro and Donzelli would not use their parliamentary immunity to dodge the case and called on Meloni to say whether she agreed with their attacks. (ANSA).