Rome's chamber of criminal
lawyers is set to file a petition against Justice Minister
Alfonso Bonafede over a video he posted on Facebook about the
return to Italy of ex-terrorist Cesare Battisti, sources said on
Wednesday.
The video include moments in which Battisti's identification
photograph and fingerprints were taken.
Earlier on Wednesday the ombudsman for Italian prison
inmates, Mauro Palma, said he wanted Bonafede to take down the
video in which, dressed in a warder's uniform, he exults over
the Battisti's capture.
"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 is Italian President Sergio Mattarella.
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