Italy’s anti-Mafia police investigate after journalist’s car explodes
Agencies :
A car belonging to one of Italy’s leading investigative journalists exploded outside his home overnight, prompting an investigation by Italy’s anti-Mafia authorities and condemnation Friday from Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and others. No one was injured.
The explosion late Thursday targeting Sigfrido Ranucci, lead anchor of state-run RAI3’s Report investigative series, occurred on the eighth anniversary of the car bomb slaying of Maltese investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia.
The investigative program said the explosion was so powerful that it could have killed anyone passing by. Ranucci had just returned home at the time and his daughter had walked by a half-hour before, Report said in a statement.
The blast destroyed the car, damaged another family car next to it, as well as the front gate of Ranucci’s home in Pomezia, south of Rome.
Police, firefighters and forensic crews reported to the scene and magistrates from the Rome district of the anti-Mafia police were investigating, Report said in a statement.
Video shot by Ranucci, who has been under police protection since 2021 because of threats from his hard-hitting investigations, showed the mangled remains of the cars and gate.
Meloni expressed her solidarity with Ranucci and condemned what she called “the serious act of intimidation he has suffered.”
“Freedom and independence of information are essential values of our democracies, which we will continue to defend,” she said in a statement.
Italian journalist unions, politicians and others also expressed solidarity, with many noting that Ranucci had received other threats in the past that prompted the Interior Ministry to provide him a police escort.
Report is one of the few investigative programs on Italian television and regularly breaks news involving prominent Italian politicians, business leaders and public figures.
Ranucci has been sued multiple times for defamation and just this week was absolved in the latest case he had faced.
“There have certainly been a series of incidents of intimidation, which I have always reported,” Ranucci said in comments provided by Report.
“There is definitely a general climate of isolation and delegitimization toward me and the entire editorial staff of ‘Report’ from an editorial point of view.”
The blast occurred on the eighth anniversary of the Oct. 16, 2017 murder of Caruana Galizia, who wrote extensively about suspected corruption in political and business circles in Malta. Like Ranucci, she had faced dozens of libel suits intended to silence her reporting.
Two men were sentenced to life in prison earlier this year after being convicted of complicity in the murder. Two other people pleaded guilty in 2022 to carrying out the murder and were sentenced to 40 years in prison.