ROME (ITALPRESS) – “The ex officio defense of a Libyan torturer represents one of the most shameful pages this parliament has been subjected to: the facts are incontrovertible and despite the omissions, falsehoods and attempts to deflect put forth by the government in recent months, it is very clear what happened.” This was stated by Pd Secretary Elly Schlein in the House, in an explanation of vote on the motion of no confidence in Justice Minister Carlo Nordio.
“By contravening an explicit request for arrest by the ICC and failing to respond to the Attorney General’s urging, the arrest was not validated and Almasri was not only released from prison, but also returned to Tripoli with full honors and with the possibility of continuing to kill, torture and rape, things of which he is accused,” Schlein continued. Because of your omissions, the Prosecutor’s Office at the International Criminal Court has called for Italy to be referred to the Assembly of States and the UN Security Council for failing to comply with its obligation to cooperate: you are blaming the Court of Appeals today, but you had an obligation to intervene and you shirked it. You could have kept a Libyan torturer in prison, but you did not want to: that was a political choice and we take note of it. If the problem was really a procedural technicality, he should have had Almasri re-arrested a minute later: in those days he never questioned the Court of Appeals to dispel his doubts and on the day of his release he lied to the country.”
“We have the right to know if it was Meloni who told you to take Almasri back to Libya on a state flight: the responsibilities of Nordio are serious and objective, because he did nothing even though he had a way and time and he lied, you limited yourselves to attacking the judiciary and the International Criminal Court,” the Pd leader said again. “The country has the right to know the truth. I am forced to ask for the umpteenth time why the prime minister is not here and fleeing while her ministers are called to take responsibility for the choices she imposed or endorsed in the shadows: we owed this motion of no-confidence, because the truth that you have kept silent will come to light and it will be important with this vote to put on record what you have defended. We owed it to the victims of Almasri, because we want to be a country that is on the side of the tortured and not the torturers: we owed it to the Italians who are outraged by the quality of what you have done, Italy deserves a government that does not have a justice minister who frees torturers while putting minors in jail, attacking judges and not complying with legal obligations; Nordio cannot continue in this role, with conviction we will vote no confidence.”
-photo Ipa Agency –
(ITALPRESS).
