A trial against Italy’s far-right Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni against investigative journalist Roberto Saviano begins on Tuesday.
Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party was in opposition at the time but took office last month after triumphing in the elections with a nationalist campaign that promised to block migrants from crossing the Mediterranean from North Africa.
Saviano, best known for his international mafia bestseller Gomorrah, faces up to three years in prison.
The case dates back to December 2020, when he was asked to comment on a political TV talk show about the death of a six-month-old Guinean baby in a shipwreck.
The baby, Joseph, was one of 111 migrants rescued by the charity ship Open Arms, but he died before he could receive medical attention.
In footage captured by rescuers and showing Saviano on the chat show, the baby’s mother – who was just pulled from the sea without Joseph – can be heard crying, ‘Where’s my baby? Help, I’m losing my baby!”
A visibly emotional Saviano blasted Meloni and Matteo Salvini, leader of the anti-immigrant League party now part of her coalition government – both of whom have long used anti-migrant rhetoric.
“I just wanted to tell Meloni and Salvini you bastards! How could you guys?” Saviano said on the show.
Meloni said in 2019 that charity ships rescuing migrants “should be sunk,” while Salvini, as interior secretary, prevented such ships from docking that same year.
– ‘Very grotesque’ –
PEN International, an organization that defends freedom of expression, sent an open letter to Meloni last week asking her to drop the case.
Saviano, 43, told AFP the trial was an “unequal confrontation, utterly grotesque” while press freedom groups warned it was sending a “chilling message” to journalists.
The author, who has been under police protection since the release of “Gomorrah” due to threats from Neapolitan “Camorra” mafia, said the tactic is “to intimidate one to intimidate 100.”
“It will be even more difficult (for journalists) to cover what is happening” when their words “are taken to court when they criticize power and their inhumane policies,” Saviano said.
Watchdogs say such trials are symbolic of a culture in Italy where public figures – often politicians – intimidate reporters with repeated lawsuits.
Italy ranks 58th in the 2022 World Press Freedom Index published by Reporters Without Borders, the lowest in Western Europe.
Tuesday’s trial isn’t the only one Saviano faces for defamation. He was sued by Salvini in 2018 after calling him “Il Ministro della Malavita,” or minister of the criminal underworld.
This process is scheduled to open in February.
