A former official with the
anti-immigrant Northern League was sentenced to two months in
jail Thursday for aggravated defamation after he posted a photo
of former integration minister Cecile Kyenge with a picture of a
monkey on Facebook.
Agostino Pedrali, who had been a League commissioner for
social services in the city of Coccaglio, near Brescia in
northeastern Italy, was charged over a posting on the social
media site last July that put the two photos together with the
caption "separated at birth".
He was forced to resign a few days later amidst an outcry
over the post, one of numerous racial attacks on the Congo-born
Kyenge - Italy's first black cabinet minister - that most often
came from the Northern League.
Pedrali later said the Facebook post was a "clumsy attempt"
to diffuse tension over other incidents involving Kyenge.
Following the court ruling, organized labour and human
rights groups expressed satisfaction with the sentence, saying
the court showed sensitivity and took action to try to protect
human rights.
Kyenge last year called the repeated attacks by the League
"intolerable" and demanded the party's national chief, Lombardy
Governor Roberto Maroni, do something to put an end to them.
Other League members posted photos on Facebook and used
television ads to compare Kyenge to a gorilla, copying one of
the most egregious attacks from Senator Roberto Calderoli who
compared her to an orangutan.
Calderoli defended his comments as a "joke", triggering
numerous copycat slurs.
In another incident, mannequins smeared with blood-red
paint and anti-immigrant messages were found in the town of
Cervia just as Kyenge arrived there for political meetings where
someone in the audience threw a banana in reference to the
slurs.
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