Once again, a dispute between the president of the Italian Council of Ministers, Giorgia Meloni, and a personality opposed to her policies will be settled in court. Tuesday April 16, a preliminary hearing was held in Bari (Apulia) in the context of a case concerning the historian and classical philologist Luciano Canfora, 81 years old, referred to justice for defamation with regard to the current head of the executive. Mme Meloni had filed a complaint against the left-wing academic while she was still in opposition.
If the trial is to begin on October 7, the facts in question date back to April 2022 when Mr. Canfora, professor emeritus at the University of Bari, declared, during a meeting in a high school in the same city, that the president of the far-right Fratelli d’Italia party had been considered a ” poor daughter ” and an “dangerous madwoman” before providing pledges of Atlanticism on the Ukrainian conflict.
Mr. Canfora’s conference focused on the war in Ukraine and the researcher had in the same sentence analyzed the positions taken by Mr.me Meloni in judging that, “neo-Nazi at heart”she had naturally “ranked alongside Ukrainian neo-Nazis”. A few weeks after the Russian aggression, the academic’s comments, hostile to sending weapons to kyiv, echoed the Kremlin’s propaganda speeches on the motivations for the invasion.
In the meantime, Mme Meloni, who is the heir to a political history stemming from fascism, came to power and the trial between her and Luciano Cafana is now considered by the academic’s supporters as a threat to freedom of expression. M’s lawyerme Meloni at the time of his complaint, Andrea Delmastro, today occupies the position of undersecretary of state for justice.
“Exercise of the right to criticize”
Leaving the Bari court and alongside a frail, hunched Luciano Canfora, walking with the help of a cane and visibly weakened, lawyer Michele Laforgia presented the defense position by speaking about the words of the historian of a “exercise of the right to criticize and in particular political criticism”. Interviewed during an online broadcast “Metropolis” of the daily La RepubblicaMr. Canfora for his part defended himself by declaring that the terms used against Mr.me Meloni did not reflect her thinking, but how she was perceived by others before “his Atlanticist conversion” does not change her image and transform her, in the eyes of the same people, into a stateswoman.
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