Premier Giorgia Meloni repeated
Tuesday that two members of her Brothers of Italy (FdI) party
should not resign over an alleged leak of sensitive information
regarding the case of Alfredo Cospito, an anarchist leader who
has been on hunger strike for over 100 days against the tough
jail regime he is being held under.
The two FdI MPs are Justice Undersecretary Andrea Delmastro
Delle Vedove, and his flatmate Giovanni Donzelli, a member of
the Copasir parliamentary committee that oversees Italy's
intelligence services.
They are at the centre of a huge political row with the
centre-left opposition Democratic Party (PD).
This row broke out when Donzelli revealed in the Lower House
last week that Cospito had talked to mafia bosses about getting
the 41 bis regime abolished and that four PD lawmakers had
visited him in jail.
Delmastro was the source of the 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 has said it would take legal action against Delmastro and
Donzelli.
Meloni reiterated Tuesday "i don't think there is a need for
(their) resignation.
"The prosecutor's office is doing its job,' she added, "and the
Ministry of Justice has repeatedly said that they were not
documents covered by secrecy. And it seems to me that this
sensitive information was already present in the newspapers'.
This is why 'I have no reason to say that what is in the press
cannot go to Parliament'.
She added: "The state cannot come to terms with those who
threaten it, this applies to the mafia yesterday and to
anarchists today", amid mass protests and acts of vandalism by
Cospito supporters in Italy and abroad.
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