A Rome court on Thursday sentenced
Justice Undersecretary Andrea Delmastro to a suspended
eight-month term for revealing classified information regarding
jailed anarchist Alfredo Cospito.
The undersecretary, a member of Premier Giorgia Meloni's
rightwing Brothers of Italy (FdI) party, was found guilty 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.
The prosecutors had requested at the preliminary hearings stage
that the case against the undersecretary be shelved but a judge
said no and ordered them to present an indictment request.
In January 2023 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.
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