Attorney Luigi Li Gotti said Wednesday that his criminal complaint against Premier Giorgia Meloni and officials was a judicial choice, not political.
“I made a judicial choice,” he told Radio 24. “As a common citizen, I can’t demand resignations.
“I saw aspects of potential culpability and I filed a complaint as a duty,” he noted.
Li Gotti sent the complaint on 23 January to the Rome Prosecutor’s Office over Libyan official Osama Almasri’s release. Rome chief prosecutor Francesco Lo Voi sent the same notice to Justice Minister Carlo Nordio and Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi.
Premier Giorgia Meloni said Tuesday she received notice of a probe into possible aiding and abetting and embezzlement of public funds.
Cabinet secretary with the intelligence brief Alfredo Mantovano also received the notice of investigation.
The Tribunal of Ministers will decide whether to pursue or shelve the case.
Not politically motivated
Li Gotti denied political motives in the Radio 24 interview. He rejected claims that former premier Romano Prodi was behind his complaint. He said he had “never spoken in my life with Prodi.”
Li Gotti told multiple news outlets he was once a member of the defunct Neofascist MSI party but now aligns with the Democratic Party (PD).
He also addressed accusations that he defended Mafia members, saying he had done “several things” in his career. This included “defending witnesses for the State,” he told Radio 24.
He said slain anti-Mafia prosecutor Giovanni Falcone had asked him to defend Francesco Marino Mannoia, a Cosa Nostra turncoat. Mannoia turned State’s evidence in 1989.
“He had remained without a defence (attorney) and I had the deontological duty to accept,” Li Gotti said.
He also represented families of Carabinieri officers killed in Via Fani during the 1978 Red Brigades’ kidnapping of Aldo Moro. Other clients included victims of the 1969 Piazza Fontana terror attack and the family of slain Milan police commissioner Luigi Calabresi.
‘Betrayed as a citizen’
In La Stampa, Li Gotti said he felt “betrayed as a citizen” because “Italy had freed an executioner.” “Several lies have been said” about the release, he told the newspaper.
He said he served as “justice undersecretary with the Prodi government from 2006 until 2008” and had been an MSI activist.
He alleged that the Rome court of appeals, which ordered Almasri’s release, had “tried to talk to” Nordio. “But he didn’t respond because everything had already been organised,” he claimed. “And the proof is that a Falcon had already been sent to Turin,” said Li Gotti.
Almasri, Tripoli’s Mitiga detention centre director, is wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for alleged war crimes. Charges include murder, torture, rape, and sexual violence allegedly committed in Libya from February 2015 onwards.
Italy freed and flew him back to Libya last Tuesday after an apparent technical issue in his case. Almasri returned to Tripoli on a State flight.
Interior Minister Piantedosi told the Senate Thursday that he was expelled from Italy because he is a dangerous man.
