Anti-mafia writer Roberto Saviano told Deputy Premier Matteo Salvini “shame on you” in court on Wednesday during a defamation trial in Rome. The case centres on comments Saviano made in 2018, when Salvini was interior minister and blocking migrant rescue ships.
Saviano, who famously exposed the Neapolitan Camorra mafia in his 2006 book Gomorra, called Salvini “the minister of the underworld” and accused him of threatening to remove his police protection. The League leader suggested the writer’s security detail should be reviewed after Saviano criticised the government’s handling of migrant minors and called Salvini a “bastard”.
Salvini, now transport minister and leader of the right-wing League party, sued Saviano for defamation over those remarks. Speaking after the court hearing, the minister told reporters: “I shook hands with Saviano in court and he told me ‘shame on you’. He’s rude, but it’s certainly not a crime.”
He added: “I have nothing against him. But if someone calls me a mafioso or a friend of the ‘Ndrangheta, it’s not normal — not for a minister, not for a father, not for a citizen. We fought the clans.”
The writer, who has lived under round-the-clock police protection since publishing Gomorra, remains a strong critic of Salvini and the current government, particularly over its hard-line immigration policies. He is also facing legal action for calling both Salvini and Premier Giorgia Meloni “bastards” in relation to the same issue.
Gomorra was adapted into a Cannes-winning film and a popular TV series, cementing Saviano’s international reputation as a fierce opponent of organised crime.
