Ex-MEP Chiesa thanks Italian ambassador

(ANSA) - Rome, December 16 - Italian journalist and politician Giulietto Chiesa on Tuesday thanked the Italian ambassador to Estonia for his "decisive intervention and professional mastery" after being released by police following his detention in Tallinn one day earlier.
    Chiesa's wife Fiammetta Cucurnia said ambassador Marco Clemente told local authorities "I am not leaving until you let him go".
    Chiesa, a former MEP, was released at 11 pm local time after being picked up by police at his hotel in the Estonian capital earlier in the day, and told he would be expelled from the country within 48 hours. He had left Rome on Monday morning to participate in a conference titled "Is Russia Europe's enemy?" On Tuesday Chiesa described his detention as a "blatant violation of all norms of national, international, European and global law" and as an episode that "illustrates to what point the fascist decline in Europe has reached". The detaining officers did not have a warrant, but they told Chiesa his expulsion decree was at the Estonian foreign ministry, his wife said.