La Russa 'unacceptable' on Via Rasella says Schlein

(ANSA) - ROME, MAR 31 - Senate Speaker Ignazio La Russa's calling ignoble the 1944 partisan attack on northern Italian Wehrmacht soldiers in a street near the Trevi Fountain that triggered the Ardeatine Caves reprisal massacre of 335 Italian men and boys is unacceptable, centre left opposition Democratic Party (PD) leader Elly Schlein said Friday.
    "(They were) indecent words, unacceptable for the role he holds," said Schlein of La Russa, whose Senate office makes him the second highest public official in Italy after President Sergio Mattarella.
    On Hitler's orders the Nazis took 10 men for every victim in the Via Rasella attack, totalling 330, then added in another five arbitrarily, and killed them in the limestone quarries outside Rome on the road to Ardea.
    La Russa said the Via Rasella victims were not hardened SS men but members of a marching band.
    Italy's partisan association ANPI called La Russa's words "shameful" and unworthy of his position.
    La Russa is a senior member of Premier Giorgia Meloni's rightwing Brothers of Italy (FdI) party, whose roots lie in the postwar neofascist Italian Social Movement (MSI) party, whose tricolour flame features in their logo.
    Meloni has repeatedly and unequivocally condemned Fascism and its "ignoble" racial laws against the Jews.
    La Russa collects Fascist memorabilia including busts of Mussolini. (ANSA).