The rightwing League party said
Thursday its leader Matteo Salvini had been vindicated over an
electoral stunt in Bologna in January 2020 when he buzzed a
working-class family's intercom asking if a drug pusher lived
there, after the family in question was implicated in a drugs
sweep in the Emiilian capital.
"Time is a gentleman," said Andrea Ostellari, Senate justice
committee chair and the League's commissioner for
Emilia-Romagna.
"Some people should apologise to the League and the people of
the Pilastro quarter," he said.
Salvini was cleared in the case by a court that upheld a
defence contention that the League leader's action was justified
politically in the run-up to regional elections, which the
League went on to lose.
In January 2021 Salvini himself said he had been vindicated
after the parents of the boy whose intercom he buzzed in what
was decried as a dubious electoral stunt were arrested on
suspicion of pushing drugs in the Emilian capital.
Surrounded by a film crew and a crowd of supporters for his
campaign in the Emilia Romagna elections, the nationalist leader
buzzed the intercom of the 17-year-old Tunisian boy in the
Pilastro working-class district in January 2020 and asked if a
pusher was living there.
A police officer reportedly put Salvini in touch with a woman in
the Pilastro district whose son had died of drugs and who led
the former hardline anti-migrant interior minister to the boy's
home.
The boy sued the then opposition leader, who went on to narrowly
lose the regional elections.
Salvini's opponents decried the stunt while the Tunisian
ambassador called it an unacceptable breach of privacy.
Facebook took down a video Salvini had posted of the "raid",
which had enthused his supporters.
On January 27 2021 the boy's parents, a 59-year-old
Tunisian man and a 58-year-old Swiss national, both naturalised
Italians, were arrested on suspicion of distributing and
possessing drugs with the intent to distribute, as well as
possessing counterfeit money and weapons.
Salvini said he had been vindicated, tweeting: "Anti-drugs raid
in Bologna. Time is a gentleman. Drugs are bad for you".
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