Chiara Colosimo, a member of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s rightwing Brothers of Italy (FdI) party, is reportedly close to Luigi Ciavardini.
Ciavardini is a former member of the rightist militant NAR group sentenced to 30 years for the Bologna massacre, to a further 13 for murdering policeman Francesco Evangelista, and a further ten for killing judge Mario Amato, during Italy’s Years of Lead rightist and leftist terror from the late ‘60s to the mid ‘80s.
In the vote Tuesday, FdI and its government partners, Deputy Prime Minister and Transport Minister Matteo Salvini’s right-wing League party and three-time ex-prime minister and media mogul Silvio Berlusconi’s centre-right Forza Italia (FI) party, voted in favour of naming Colosimo the new anti-mafia commission chair.
The centre-left Democratic Party (PD), its green and left-wing allies AVS, and the left-leaning populist 5-Star Movement (M5S) voted against her, or boycotted the vote, citing her alleged links to Ciavardini.
She was duly elected with the votes of the government.
Colosimo has played down her relationship with Ciavardini, saying she knew him in her former official capacities as regional councillor in his capacity as a representative of a prisoner social-rehabilitation and reintegration group.
The new chair invited the relatives of terror victims, who had urged her not to be elected, to come and talk with her at the commission and tell her what their priorities are.
ANSA
