(ANSA) - Rome, May 26 - Italian Interior Minister Angelino
Alfano on Thursday quashed claims that anti-mafia writer and
journalist Roberto Saviano does not need police protection.
"Roberto Saviano's security detail is not in question", he
said, stressing he wanted to "close the controversy".
Saviano has repeatedly faced death threats that forced him
to live under police protection for exposing the secrets of the
Naples-based mafia Camorra in his book Gomorrah, published in
2006 when he was 26 years old.
On Wednesday, Senator Vincenzo D'Anna, a member of the
so-called Liberal-Popular Alliance - Autonomies (ALA) attacked
Saviano as a "phony icon, who got rich with a half-copied book"
saying neither the writer nor Democratic Party (PD) Senator
Rosaria Capacchione, a former anti-mafia investigative reporter,
needed police protection.
ALA is a new centre-right group which supports PD leader
and Premier Matteo Renzi's government, having broken away from
centre-right former premier Silvio Berlusconi's Forza Italia
party.
Saviano's protection 'not in question'
Senator had suggested taking it away