This morning, instead of dealing with the thousands of political issues that I have to tackle in my role as President of Italia dei Valori, I’ve had to spend time preparing a court case for defamation against the director of “Libero”, Maurizio Belpietro, for another serious error that he has committed to my detriment. He has put a headline across all the columns of the front page: DI PIETRO E IL CAPOCOSCA. (download the PDF of the article 111Kb)
If you then go and read the article that is however hidden on page 13, the journalist Nuzzi points out: “It’s certain that Di Pietro didn’t know that the ones asking for his photo were a gang of men from the ‘ndrangheta”. (see the sentence that is highlighted – 401Kb)
So basically, you discover that behind the headline “splashed” on the front page, there is nothing more than a photo asked for by some people who were present in a restaurant where I happened to be.
Even this morning – and yesterday – and the day before yesterday and every day for almost the last twenty years –I come across people in the street or at a restaurant or at the airport or the station, who ask me for a photo as a souvenir. It’s something that a person in the public eye cannot shun, even out of respect for the person asking for it and from whom it’s certainly not possible to ask for a copy of their criminal record.
And so why give so much importance to this insignificant fact as to give a headline on the front page? There is a reason, and I think it is a criminal one: to connect myself to other people who were arrested yesterday. People who were accused of having created and participated in a Milan branch of the ‘ndrangheta. So basically to make people believe that I could have some role in that mafia association.
The headline, appearing in enormous letter- size, prepared by or on the orders of the editor Maurizio Belpietro, contains historically false allusions, that are purposely of a denigrating nature and thus maliciously defamatory.

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