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.
After the verdict Delmastro said he would not resign and hoped to be acquitted on appeal.
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