This time Salvini is left alone. Only with the gallows in handin his world of social and media pillory. He was the only politician to profit from the pain caused by the Rigopiano affair, the hotel located at the foot of the Gran Sasso which on 18 January 2017 was overwhelmed by an avalanche, in which 29 people died. “Twenty-nine dead, no one guilty (or almost). This is not ‘justice’, this is shame. All my closeness and my solidarity with the families of the innocent victims “, wrote Salvini, deputy premier and minister for infrastructures, on Twitter while the judge of breaking latest news, Gianluca Sarandreawho had just issued the sentence on the tragedy (five convicted and twenty-five acquitted) he was saved by the policemen from the aggression of some relatives of the victims and received insults and verbal threats of all kinds: “Bastard”, “you must die”, “sold”, “you suck”, “it doesn’t end here”. Insults that Salvini must have liked (“state official”, recalls Twitter), who enriched his thoughts with a video showing the anger of the relatives of the victims against the judge.
This time Salvini is left alone. Only with the gallows in handin his world of social and media pillory. He was the only politician to profit from the pain caused by the Rigopiano affair, the hotel located at the foot of the Gran Sasso which on 18 January 2017 was overwhelmed by an avalanche, in which 29 people died. “Twenty-nine dead, no one guilty (or almost). This is not ‘justice’, this is shame. All my closeness and my solidarity with the families of the innocent victims “, wrote Salvini, deputy premier and minister for infrastructures, on Twitter while the judge of breaking latest news, Gianluca Sarandreawho had just issued the sentence on the tragedy (five convicted and twenty-five acquitted) he was saved by the policemen from the aggression of some relatives of the victims and received insults and verbal threats of all kinds: “Bastard”, “you must die”, “sold”, “you suck”, “it doesn’t end here”. Insults that Salvini must have liked (“state official”, recalls Twitter), who enriched his thoughts with a video showing the anger of the relatives of the victims against the judge.
Those who expected, however, that of Salvini would have been only the first in a long series of interventions by indignant politicians, in search of easy consensus against an “unjust sentence”, were disappointed. No other Northern League exponent has followed its leader. From Brothers of Italy, always in the front row to denounce the evils of Italian justice (that is, the lack of prison), tight-lipped. It is difficult to do the opposite when the Minister of Justice, Carlo Nordio, refers to his own party. No comments from the other parties, except one. The president of the M5s, Giuseppe Conte, speaks: that of Rigopiano “was a great tragedy” and “I understand the desperation of the family”, but “it is necessary to wait for the reasons for the sentence”. There aren’t even the forcaioli grillini anymore.
That a deputy prime minister, however, fuels the pillory against a judge does not seem to be exactly a civilized country, and someone has remembered it. The district council of the National Association of Magistrates of Abruzzo has taken a stand and, “while expressing closeness to the family members of the Rigopiano tragedy”, in a note he firmly rejected “any form of attack expressed without the reasons for the sentence being known, especially if this comes from institutional bodiescalled above all to guarantee the rule of law to which they belong”, giving an obvious slap to Salvini (waiting for a position taken by the national ANM).
Another slap came from Gian Domenico Caiazza, president of the Union of criminal chambers. For Salvini, Caiazza said, the “stone of the scandal” is in the fact that the defendants have almost all been acquitted. “We must deduce that the greater the number of convicts, the more we will be reassured that justice has been done. Conversely, the more the number of acquitted grows, the more the shame grows”. An “extravagant (and alarming)” idea – continued Caiazza – which “assumes another, truly frightening: that is, that the acquittal of the accused is the shipwreck of justice, and the conviction its triumph”. The next step is for the good judge to be the one who adopts the ideas of the public prosecution” and who “is there not to evaluate whether the accusation is founded, but to certify it. Do you think this, Minister? Just say it clearly.” “Yesterday rather – concluded Caiazza – we should have been ashamed for another episode. At the reading of the sentence, the courtroom was desecrated by an indecent uproar of furious insults and very serious threats against a judge of the Republic, remained with dignity and courage, standing in the classroom, to receive them. A judge who pronounced a sentence ‘in the name of the Italian people’”.
Shame, we add, is not only in the lack of defense of an attacked judge, but also in an information system Thatafter witnessing the damage caused by the media process (insults, threats and violence), continued to feed the mechanism of the pillory without restraint. “Rigopiano, no guilty”, headlined La Stampa yesterday, forgetting to mention the five sentences imposed by the judge. In the same direction La Repubblica (“Massacre without culprits”) and Il Giornale (“The massacre remains without culprits”). An incredible work of disinformation which, yes, will remain without culprits.