The Italian Justice has sentenced the Minister of Regional Affairs and Autonomies, Roberto Calderoli, of the far-right party La Liga, to seven months in prison for racist insults against Cécile Kyenge, the Afro-descendant Prime Minister of Italy.
A court in Bergamo confirmed on Thursday the sentence for aggravated defamation of racial origin against Cécile Kyenge, after Roberto Calderoli, in 2013, when he was vice president of the Italian Senate, compared the then minister with an orangutan during a rally of his own. party in Treviglio, in northern Italy.
The Italian Justice already sentenced the now minister in the second instance, but the judges annulled the previous sentences.
However, the Italian Constitutional Court indicated that Roberto Calderoli cannot enjoy the constitutional protection of parliamentary immunity, despite the fact that the authorities declared that the senator’s opinions were “expressed by a deputy in the exercise of his functions” and therefore both “unquestionable”.
According to the Constitution, opinions expressed outside the specific exercise of parliamentary functions are only subject to immunity if they are intended to publicize parliamentary activity, so the prerogative “cannot be extended to insults.”
Source: TSF
