Undersecretary of Justice Andrea Delmastro Delle Vedove he continues to say he is convinced he has not committed any crime when he communicated to his party colleague Giovanni Donzelli, coordinator of the Brothers of Italy, the contents of the reports of the Prison Administration Department on the talks in prison between the anarchist Alfredo Cospito e two prisoners of ‘Ndrangheta and Camorra. Why they were not secret actsas the Keeper of the Seals Carlo reiterated in Parliament Nordicwhen he also explained the reasons why he confirmed the “hard prison” in Cospito; reasons that earned him the inscription appearing on a wall in Lecce (“Nordio Executioner let’s hope you die”) and the consequent solidarity of the premier Giorgia Meloni(extended to members of the Italian Representation at the European Union in Brussels, smeared with another slogan): «The State is at their side and does not back down».
However it is probable that Delmastro only understood exactly yesterday, in front of the questions and objections of the prosecutor Francesco Lo Voiof the adjunct Paul Ielo and substitutes Rosalia Affinitus e Gennaro Varone, the legal terms of the matter in which it is involved. The point is not whether the documents he received were ‘secret’, ‘classified’ or ‘of limited disclosure’, but rather that internal acts of his ministry concerning the activity of the penitentiary police in prisons (such as listening to conversations between prisoners and the related service reports) are covered by official secrecy. Which he would have violated when he shared them with his colleague and roommate Donzelli.
Having fully understood this, the undersecretary answered the questions posed by the prosecutors but reserved himself, together with his lawyer Joseph Valentine (former center-right parliamentarian and former Undersecretary of Justice in one of the Berlusconi governments, as well as FdI’s later withdrawn candidate for the vice-presidency of the newly formed Superior Council of the Judiciary) to deposit in the next few days a defensive memory to attempt to clarify your position further.
In the public prosecutor’s office where the undersecretary remained for approx two hoursand where the investigation against him will continue with the summoning of the deputy Donzelli and other activities, the knot to untie is juridical, not political. Through the exact reconstruction of the facts and their evaluation from a criminal point of view.
In some public statements Delmastro and other exponents of the Brothers of Italy have argued that the disclosure of the talks in prison did not violate anything because it was all already written in at least one article published on the morning of January 31, mentioned on the same day by Donzelli in his speech in the Chamber against the deputies of the Democratic Party who had gone to make visit to Cospito in prison. But that article did not report the sentences uttered by the anarchist and the other prisoners, referred to in the report of the prison police, cited verbatim by the coordinator of FdI. So that could not be the deputy’s source.
Furthermore, as reported by Nordio in Parliament, Delmastro’s request to the head of the Dap John Russo of “one updated report on the prisoner Cospito by the penitentiary police» on the «observation of the inmate» dates back to January 29 (a Sunday) and was broadcast the following day. So before the article which spoke of contacts between the anarchist and other mafia prisoners.
On the reason for his request to the Dap, the undersecretary under investigation would have replied to the judges referring to others information circulated in the previous daysbut this too will be the subject of investigations and further investigations by the Public Prosecutor’s Office.
In any case the hypothesized crime charged to the government official would not have occurred with the request and acquisition of that document, but in the communication subsequently made to Donzelli.
The suspect allegedly defended himself by arguing that since those papers were not secret to him, there was no constraint that forbade him to share it with his colleague and friend; opposite thesis to that of the prosecutors, and it is on this point that the outcome of the investigation hinges. The content of which remains secret even for Delmastro at the moment, apart from the invitation to appear for interrogation and (obviously) the content of this document. The undersecretary received the summons for yesterday on the afternoon of Monday 13 February, and the news only spread on Thursday afternoon. When Minister Nordio also seems to have been informed.