Writer Roberto Saviano said Monday that the conviction of former mafia lawyer Michele Santonastaso for making threats aggravated by mafia connections demonstrates "they are not invincible". Two mafia bosses, Francesco Bidognetti and Antonio Iovine, were acquitted at the same time on charges of threatening the lives of Saviano and journalist and Senator Rosaria Capacchione.
Santonastaso was given a one-year suspended sentence and ordered to pay damages to Saviano and Capacchione, as well as the organization representing journalists in the Campania region.
Saviano and Capacchione were under heavy security in the courtroom and live under personal bodyguard protection assigned by the Italian government due to death threats they have received.
After the verdict, Saviano said that he hoped to find more freedom.
"I hope this judgment will be a first step towards freedom, and that I may have a new life," he added.
Earlier, he called it "an important trial".
"It had never happened in the history of organized crime that (mafia) chiefs were exposed to so much freedom of the press," he added.
Bidognetti and Iovine were leaders of the Casalesi clan of the Neapolitan Camorra mafia.
Iovine, 48, was caught on November 17, 2010, in Casal di Principe, the town north of Naples that spawned the Casalesi, whose criminal empire was exposed by Saviano.
Iovine was on Italy's 30 most-wanted list along with other superbosses like Cosa Nostra chief Matteo Messina Denaro.
In 2006, Saviano published a best-selling non-fiction book about the Camorra titled 'Gomorra' (Gomorrah), a pun on the word Camorra.
It was later turned into an award-winning film and earned Saviano death threats from the Casalesi clan.
Capacchione, a Senator with the Democratic Party (PD), has been an anti-Camorra journalist for nearly 30 years for Campania daily Il Mattino, and has written a book about the Casalesi clan.
During the trial in October 2013, the court was told that Santonastaso made threats against Saviano when he read a letter in court on behalf of his Casalesi client.
The letter, read during an appeal of the Spartacus case involving one of Italy's biggest-ever mafia trials, also featured unnerving mentions of Capacchione and magistrate Raffaele Cantone.
On Monday, prosecutors said it was "strange" that a lawyer would do such a thing on his own.
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