Await final verdict in Delmastro case says Meloni

(ANSA) - ROME, DEC 2 - Critics of the government must await the final verdict in the case of Justice Undersecretary Andrea Delmastro fter his indictment by a preliminary hearings judge in Rome for allegedly revealing classified information regarding the case of jailed anarchist Alfredo Cospito, Premier Giorgia Meloni said Saturday.
    In Italy, sentences are only considered definitive once they have gone through two appeals, the second and last to the supreme Court of Cassation.
    Meloni pointed out that some of the prosecutors in the case had argued against Delmastro's indictment and judicial opinion on the case was divided.
    The undersecretary, a member of Meloni's rightwing Brothers of Italy (FdI) party, is accused of leaking information that was potentially embarrassing to the opposition about the Cospito case to his flat mate and fellow FdI member Giovanni Donzelli, a member of the Copasir parliamentary committee that oversees Italy's intelligence services, who subsequently disclosed it in parliament.
    In July prosecutors had requested that the case against the undersecretary be shelved but a judge said no and ordered them to present an indictment request.
    In January Donzelli told parliament that Cospito, who was on hunger strike at the time to protest against the 41 bis jail regime he is being held under, had talked to mafia bosses about getting the treatment abolished.
    The jail regime is usually reserved for mafiosi.
    Donzelli also revealed that four lawmakers from the centre-left opposition Democratic Party (PD) had visited Cospito, who is serving a combined 30-year sentence for the Fossano bombing in which two Carabinieri were injured and for kneecapping a nuclear company executive in 2012.
    During the debate Donzelli asked whether the PD was on the side of the State or that of the mafia and terrorists, sparking indignation from the opposition.
    Delmastro subsequently fuelled the row 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. (ANSA).