Attorney Luigi Li Gotti said on
Wednesday that a criminal complaint he filed against Premier
Giorgia Meloni and other officials over the release and flight
back to Libya of an alleged war criminal was a judicial choice
and not a politically-motivated move.
"I made a judicial choice", he told Radio 24.
"As a common citizen, I can't demand resignations.
"I saw aspects of potential culpability and I filed a complaint
as a duty", he noted.
Li Gotti on 23 January sent the complaint to the Rome
Prosecutor's Office on the case of the liberation of Libyan
official Osama Almasri.
Premier Giorgia Meloni on Tuesday said she had received notice
of a probe into possible aiding and abetting and embezzlement of
public funds from Rome chief prosecutor Francesco Lo Voi and
that the same notice of investigation had been sent to Justice
Minister Carlo Nordio, Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi and
cabinet secretary with the intelligence brief Alfredo Mantovano.
The Tribunal of Ministers is set to examine the case to decide
whether to pursue it or shelve it.
On Wednesday, Li Gotti was asked in the Radio 24 interview
whether ex-premier and former European Commission President
Romano Prodi, the father of the now deceased progressive Ulivo
alliance under whose government he had served as justice
undersecretary, was behind the initiative.
Li Gotti denied this, saying he has "never spoken in my life
with Prodi".
The attorney told multiple news outlets that he was a member of
the now-defunct Neofascist MSI party and that he now considers
himself close to the Democratic Party (PD).
On Wednesday, he also commented on accusations that he defended
members of the Mafia as an attorney, telling Radio 24 that he
had done "several things" in his career, "including defending
witnesses for the State".
He said slain anti-mafia prosecutor Giovanni Falcone had asked
him to defend Francesco Marino Mannoia, a former member of Cosa
Nostra who turned State's evidence in 1989, "because he had
remained without a defence (attorney) and I had the
deontological duty to accept".
He added that he had also represented the families of
Carabinieri officers killed in Via Fani during the 1978 Red
Brigades' (BR) kidnapping of Christian Democrat statesman Aldo
Moro, of the victims of the Piazza Fontana terror attack in 1969
and of late Milan police commissioner Luigi Calabresi who was
murdered in 1972.
And in another interview published by Turin daily La Stampa, Li
Gotti said he felt "betrayed as a citizen" because "Italy had
freed an executioner" and that "several lies have been said" in
connection with the release.
He also told La Stampa that he served as a "justice
undersecretary with the Prodi government from 2006 until 2008"
and that he had previously been an MSI activist.
In the interview, he alleged that the Rome court of appeals that
ordered Almasri's release on Tuesday due to a procedural issue
regarding the alleged lack of involvement of Justice Minister
Carlo Nordio, had "tried to talk to him" but "he didn't respond"
because "everything had already been organized".
"And the proof is that a Falcon had already been sent to Turin",
claimed Li Gotti.
Libyan police chief Almasri, the director of Tripoli's Mitiga
detention centre who is wanted by the International Criminal
Court (ICC) for alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes,
including murder, torture, rape and sexual violence, allegedly
committed in Libya from February 2015 onwards, was freed and
flown back to Libya last Tuesday after an apparent technical
issue with his case.
Almasri was flown back to Tripoli on a State flight.
Piantedosi told the Senate Thursday that he was expelled from
Italy because he is a dangerous man.
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