League Party retracts statements blaming a “foreigner” for the murder of Reggio Emilia pizzaiolo Raffaele Stipa once the suspect is confirmed to be a 42-year-old Italian man. Their calls for remigration were loud.
The rightwing League party on Tuesday dropped calls for the “remigration” of a man accused of killing a pizzaiolo in Reggio Emilia, after the alleged murderer turned out to be Italian rather than a migrant as had initially circulated on social media.
The suspect, identified by investigators as Andrea Pellati, a 43-year-old Reggio Emilia resident with a history of drug addiction and prior convictions, allegedly stabbed to death 67-year-old pizzaiolo Raffaele Stipa on Monday evening after his demand for an umpteenth free pizza was turned down. Investigators believe the motive traces back to an unpaid debt of around €20. Stipa, originally from Capo d’Orlando in the province of Messina, had run the Pizzeria Yoghi in Reggio Emilia together with his sister Antonella for more than twenty years.
Attack and arrest
The attack took place on Monday evening inside the pizzeria on Via Gran Sasso d’Italia, in the southern part of the city. According to investigators, the suspect entered armed with a knife. Early reconstructions suggest the man entered “with the sole aim of killing the victim”, given that one of the knife blows was directed at the throat. Antonella Stipa was seriously wounded as she tried to defend her brother and was hospitalised; her condition was later described as stable.
The suspect was tracked down and arrested hours after the killing, identified through the pizzeria’s internal security cameras. Pellati was intercepted at around 2am at his parents’ home and questioned. Prosecutors are reportedly evaluating aggravating circumstances of premeditation and futile motive.
League retracts statements
As soon as unconfirmed reports of a foreign attacker spread, the League’s propaganda machine moved into gear. Tommaso Fiazza, the party’s group leader in the Emilia-Romagna regional assembly, spoke of the need for “serious reflection, without hypocrisy: a man was stabbed and killed for refusing to give away yet another pizza to a foreigner. We are not looking at an episode of ordinary crime, but at yet another demonstration of violence incompatible with our way of life.” He went so far as to describe remigration as a “concrete tool for safeguarding security.”
League deputy Laura Cavandoli, elected in the Emilia-Romagna constituency, echoed the sentiment. “Enough of people who bring violence, brutal and unjustifiable as in this case, into our country.”
The party’s Pontedera branch went further still, reposting content from the “Remigrazione” social media profile, which has more than 14,000 followers: “Pizzaiolo killed with knife in Reggio Emilia by a foreign customer. REMIGRATION: THE ONLY SOLUTION!” The post linked, in apparent self-contradiction, to an ANSA report stating the opposite: that the man was of Italian nationality.
The calls ended once the suspect was formally identified as Italian. Caught out, League representatives went quiet, not before withdrawing their statement. Cavandoli and Fiazza asked for their press releases to be retracted “in light of the new information released by investigators, which alters a central element of the initial reconstruction.”
Roberto Vannacci, the far-right general-turned-politician who has made remigration his signature issue since leaving the League, also amplified the unverified claim on social media on Tuesday morning, writing “a foreigner kills and wounds over a pizza.” He also tied the case to both remigration and a revision of self-defence law. Unlike the League, he did not delete the post, instead correcting it: “Further investigation suggests the killer is Italian, with a prior record for drugs…”
