Italian politicians back newspaper after vandal attack

Agencies :

The spectrum of Italy’s political class has condemned a group of protesters who Friday vandalized the main office of Turin-based newspaper La Stampa.

The condemnations came from far-right Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, the head of the main center-left opposition party Elly Schlein, as well as from the non-political President of the Republic Sergio Mattarella.

This is a “very serious act which deserves the strongest condemnation,” Meloni said in a statement Friday, after phoning the editor-in-chief of the paper, Andrea Malaguti, and adding that “freedom of the press and information is a precious good.”
Mattarella on Saturday condemned a “violent attack,” while Schlein, quoted by La Stampa, called it a “serious and unacceptable act” and said that “every newsroom is a bastion of freedom and democracy.”

According to the daily’s website, around a hundred people participating in a demonstration in Turin against the government’s budget plans broke away from the main march and forced their way into the newspaper’s offices, which were empty that day due to a nationwide strike by Italian journalists.

“Shouting ‘Terrorist journalists, you’re number one on the list!’, they stormed the newsroom and tore up valuable books and documents that we use daily for our work,” the paper said.
Photos showed the walls of the newsroom covered in graffiti such as “Free Palestine” and “Newspapers complicit with Israel.”
An AFP reporter also saw that they hung a banner saying “Free Shahin,” referring to the imam of a Turin mosque who is facing deportation.