Inmates ombudsman says No Bonafede vid

(ANSA) - Rome, January 16 - The ombudsman for Italian prison inmates, Mauro Palma, on Wednesday said he wanted Justice Minister Alfonso Bonafede to remove from the ministry's online magazine a video in which, dressed in a warder's uniform, he exults over the capture of former leftist terrorist Cesare Battisti.
    "Unfortunately, (the video) joins the reference to "rotting" (in jail) that Interior Minister (Matteo Salvini) has expressed on several occasions in his own videos," Palma said.
    Palma said "phrases and images that aim to gain consensus via a language extraneous to the Constitution end up consolidating a culture of social unravelling".
    Bonafede and Salvini have been criticised for allegedly hogging the limelight over Battisti's capture in Bolivia after 37 years on the run from a life sentence for four murders.
    Bonafede donned a warder's uniform and Salvini his customary police uniform in a hyped-up photo op to greet Battisti's return to Italy.
    Critics said Salvini's wish that Battisti should rot in jail clashes with the Constitutionally mandated principle of rehabilitation for prisoners.
    Supreme Council of Magistrates (CSM) Vice President David Ermini said Wednesday he personally wouldn't have shot the video that Bonafede did celebrating Battisti's capture.
    Bonafede has been accused of self-glorification in shooting the video where he appears in a prison guard's uniform and boasts about his ministry's success.
    "I wouldn't have done it", said Ermini, adding "I'm speaking on a personal level".
    The CSM is the Italian judiciary's self-governing body, whose titular head if Italian President Sergio Mattarella.