Calderoli Kyenge orangutan slur not covered by privilege (3)

(ANSA) - Rome, March 23 - Anti-migrant League heavyweight Roberto Calderoli's 2013 description of Italy's first black minister Cecile Kyenge as an orangutan is not covered by parliamentary privilege, the Constitutional Court ruled Friday, upholding an appeal from a Bergamo court.
    Calderoli, a former deputy Senate Speaker and former minister for reforms, is being tried for defamation in the case.
    Kyenge, a doctor born in the Democratic Republic of Congo, became Italy's first black minister in 2013 when she was sworn into ex-premier Enrico Letta's cabinet. She is now an MEP.
    In 2014 Kyenge invited Calderoli to make a pilgrimage to the Congolese village where he claimed her father placed a hex on him.
    Calderoli, a former minister for reforms and simplification under ex-premier Silvio Berlusconi, told weekly magazine Oggi that he needed an exorcist to lift the 'macumba' allegedly placed on him in Kyenge's native village in Democratic Republic of Congo.
    Calderoli is facing criminal charges of defamation aggravated by racial hatred and discrimination against Kyenge.
    Since making the remark he underwent six operations, was twice in intensive care, broke two ribs and two fingers, and his mother died, according to the Oggi interview.
    The run of apparent bad luck culminated with the discovery of a two-meter snake in his kitchen.
    "Maybe it's time to send Kyenge's dad a message of detente," Calderoli told the magazine.
    "It seems to me that I am still being persecuted," replied Kyenge at the time.