Ossigeno has ascertained 10 more threats – 15 November 2018

The following journalists are victims: Lirio Abbate, Bruno Manfellotto, editor of L’Espresso (Lazio); Gianni Festa and Federico Festa (Campania); Roberto Di Meo and Roberto Canè (Umbria); Pino Guastella (Sicily) and Federico Ruffo and Sigfrido Ranucci (Lazio).

From the 1^st January to the 15^th November 2018 Ossigeno has identified and documented 236 unjustifiable attacks of the same type. Ossigeno per l’Informazionemaintains that the incidents described below represent unjustifiable violations of freedom of expression and of the media. Ten journalists and video operators directly attacked have been added to the Table of names of victims of unjustifiable attacks.

LAZIO – Lirio Abbate, Bruno Manfellotto, editor

ROMA – In October 2018 the judge of the Civil Court of Rome, Marzia Cruciani, rejected the claim for damages initiated by the former Italian Prime Minister Massimo D’Alema against Lirio Abbate (L’Espresso), instructing the former Prime Minister to pay € 5,500 for legal costs. The complaint of the politician also concerned the then editor of L’Espresso Bruno Manfellotto and the publisher.

CAMPANIA – Gianni Festa and Federico Festa

AVELLINO – On the 2^nd November 2018, two anonymous white envelopes, addressed respectively to journalists Gianni Festa (Quotidiano del Sud) and Federico Festa (Ottopagine), were handed in to the Aventine editorial offices of Il Quotidiano del Sud containing an identical handwritten message: “We will shoot you”.

UMBRIA – Roberto Di Meo and Roberto Canè

The Italian Supreme Court, 24 years after the start of the trial, acquitted the journalists of La Nazione, Roberto Di Meo and Roberto Canè, cited for damages for an article published in the Terni edition of the paper. In the 1994 article, Roberto Di Meo mistakenly reported that the Italian Republican Party (PRI) was involved in the so-called “Tangentopoli di Terni” a confluence of bribes in the town of Terni, confusing it with the Liberal Party (PLI). One of the former directors of the PRI was condemned by the Court for reckless litigation over “abuse of the legal process”. He will have to pay ten thousand euros for reckless litigation and 8200 euros for legal costs.

SICILIA -Pino Guastella

SIRACUSA – On the 9^th November the Syracuse “flying squad” placed under house arrest a man who on the 1^st October 2018 in Syracuse, in the courtroom of the Court of Assizes, during a hearing in the area reserved for the public had threatened the journalist Pino Guastella, editor of the online journal Diario 1984, warning him not to publish other articles about his brother-in-law, Gianfranco Urso, currently in prison and belonging to the Bottaro-Attanasio mafia clan.

LAZIO – Federico Ruffo

ROME – During the night between 12^th and 13^th November 2018, around 4:30 am, in Rome, between Ostia Antica and Acilia, someone tried to set fire to the home of the journalist Federico Ruffo, a correspondent of the investigative television programme Rai Report. After spreading petrol on the landing, they fled without setting it alight due perhaps to Ruffo’s dog which started to bark furiously.

All news can be read at ossigeno.info