Delmastro Gets 8-Month Sentence in Secrecy Case

Rome: A Rome court on Thursday sentenced Justice Undersecretary Andrea Delmastro to a suspended eight-month term for revealing classified information regarding jailed anarchist Alfredo Cospito. The undersecretary, a member of Premier Giorgia Meloni’s rightwing Brothers of Italy (FdI) party, was found guilty of leaking information that was potentially embarrassing to the opposition about the Cospito case to his flatmate and fellow FdI member Giovanni Donzelli, a member of the Copasir parliamentary committee that oversees Italy’s intelligence services, who subsequently disclosed it in parliament.

According to Ansa News Agency, the prosecutors had initially requested at the preliminary hearings stage that the case against Delmastro be shelved. However, a judge rejected this request and ordered them to present an indictment. In January 2023, Donzelli told parliament that Cospito, who was on hunger strike at the time to protest against the 41 bis jail regime, had talked to mafia bosses about getting the treatment abolished. The jail regime is usually reserved for mafiosi.

Donzelli also revealed that four lawmakers from the centre-left opposition Democratic Party (PD) had visited Cospito, who is serving a combined 30-year sentence for the Fossano bombing in which two Carabinieri were injured and for kneecapping a nuclear company executive in 2012. During the debate, Donzelli questioned whether the PD was on the side of the State or that of the mafia and terrorists, which sparked indignation from the opposition.

Delmastro further fueled the controversy by stating that the PD lawmakers had conceded to Cospito’s demand that they meet other people being held under the 41 bis, including two mafia bosses, as a condition for meeting him. Following the verdict, Delmastro announced that he would not resign and expressed his hope to be acquitted on appeal.