Intercepted journalists, Cartabia orders investigations. Di Nicola, Cerno and Ruotolo: “The minister protects the work of reporters”

The Minister of Justice Marta Cartabia ordered investigations on the investigation of Trapani on NGOs, in the context of which they were intercepted also several journalists. It is the first initiative to verify the conduct of a judicial office that the minister has adopted since she took office in via Arenula. Solicitations for his intervention had come from the parliamentarians Nicola Fratoianni of the Italian Left e Erasmo Palazzotto di Leu, who had announced the submission of questions. Even the words of Sandro Ruotolo, Tommaso Cerno (Pd) e Primo Di Nicola (M5s) who in a note write: “It is a made serious, we are facing the disrespect of professional secrecy, of the violation of the constitutionally guaranteed freedom of the press. We ask the Minister to know which initiatives, as far as he is concerned, he intends to take in order to acquire additional elements on what happened; if it intends to take initiatives to adequately protect the work of journalists, their inviolable freedom in the exercise of the profession “.

Saturday morning on the striking case of wiretapping against Nancy Porsia, which for years has been dealing with the route of migrants from Libya, and other colleagues including Antonio Massari of the Everyday occurrence and in the excavation of Future (heard indirectly), the acting Prosecutor of Trapani also intervened in an attempt to reduce it Maurizio Agnello. Interviewed byAdnKronos the prosecutor, who inherited the file on the role of NGOs Youth saves, Save The Children e Doctors Without Borders during the landings from 2016 having only taken up service in February 2019, he confirmed that Porsia “was intercepted for a few months in the second half of 2017, because some subjects investigated they referred to her who was aboard one of the ships under investigation ”. But he added that “in any case, in the informative summary of the entire investigation filed last June there is no trace of the transcripts of the interceptions of the journalist and there is no reference to other journalists ”.

Therefore “no interception of the journalist will be used in the proceedings”, which in the information filed in June by the Judicial Police, ie by the Sco, the Mobile Squad and the Port Authority, “is reported indirectly, because there are other intercepted subjects in which they speak of her“. She was intercepted “on the occasion of her examination of summary information. On that occasion, the Flying Squad tells me again, she gave a big hand to the investigation, but she was never neither suspected nor investigated. In the listening trick that the Judicial Police makes, the day and time of a conversation and the subject with whom the intercepted subject is talking is usually indicated. And in that brogliaccio the conversation with his will also have occurred legal“. In 2017 the pm of that time Andrea Tarondo, asked the investigating judge of the Court of Trapani to authorize the wiretapping. And the investigating judge granted them. But why intercept a journalist? The Attorney is agree on what was done by the prosecutor when he was not yet head of the prosecutor’s office? “On this Rather not answer“. As for the fact that “no other journalists have been the subject of wiretapping”, this obviously does not exclude that they have been overheard talking with intercepted people.

Odg and Fnsi also ask for clarity on the matter. “We are facing the disfigurement of professional secrecy”, denounces the national president of the Order of Journalists Carlo Verna, who announces an appeal to the head of state in his capacity as “supreme guarantor of the Constitution” and as president of the CSM, given that the very “quality of democracy” is at stake. There Federation of the press he asked for clarification on the whole affair and on a “disturbing” detail: the transcription of excerpts from interviews relating to the investigation of Giulio Regeni.