Investigative journalists sued by the daughter of an Italian neofascist leader

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A sentence in an article quoting Ordine Nuovo as a terrorist group founded by him is being contested

OSSIGENO, 6 November 2026 – The Legal Help Desk of Ossigeno per l’informazione, which operates in collaboration with Media Defence, has decided to take on the courtroom defence of journalists Stefania Limiti and Paolo Andruccioli, who have been sued for defamation through the press by Senator Isabella Rauti, Undersecretary for Defence, who accuses them of having offended the memory of her father, Pino Rauti (1926–2012), one of the best-known historical figures of the Italian far right and of neofascism. The defence has been entrusted to lawyer Andrea Di Pietro, coordinator of the Legal Help Desk.

The two journalists allegedly offended his memory by writing, in a parenthetical remark within an article published on 16 March 2026 in the online newspaper “Terzogiornale,” that he was the “founder of the terrorist group Ordine Nuovo” a claim that, according to the senator, is not true, since he was supposedly only the founder of the Ordine Nuovo Study Centre and remained unconnected to the terrorist formation that later emerged as an offshoot of his study centre.

What is therefore being contested is a brief journalistic account of a historical episode dating back more than half a century, recalled in the following verbatim sentence: “Vittorio Occorsio is a magistrate killed on 10 July 1976 by Pierluigi Concutelli, military leader of Ordine Nuovo, the terrorist group founded by Pino Rauti.”

The plaintiff maintains that the sentence is defamatory because Pino Rauti founded the Ordine Nuovo Study Centre in 1956 and, afterwards, from 1969 onwards, that is, from the time he rejoined the MSI, he remained extraneous to the developments of the formation known as Ordine Nuovo, developments that gave rise first to a Political Movement (dissolved in 1973) and then to clandestine and terrorist groups, among them the one led by Pierluigi Concutelli referred to in the article.

Stefania Limiti’s defence objects that the formal distinction between the Study Centre and Ordine Nuovo does not have and cannot have any substantive significance in practical terms. Moreover, this historical truth has already been established in previous criminal trials concerning the same matter. It cannot have such significance because, throughout the various phases and forms of Ordine Nuovo, “Pino Rauti took on the role of undisputed leader,” as historian Elia Rosati testified before the judges, co-author, together with Aldo Giannuli, of the volume “Storia di Ordine Nuovo,” published in 2017 by Mimesis. On the basis of these assessments, in 2024 another proceeding arising from the same accusation brought against Stefania Limiti and Paolo Andruccioli was dismissed. ASP

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