18 months detention for having threatened Paolo Borrometi

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On Facebook he wrote that he would have eaten Borrometi’s heart. The reporter had exposed his dubious activity at the fruit and vegetable market of Vittoria.

On the 28th September 2018 the Court of Ragusa handed down a sentence of one year and six months imprisonment to the man who, in 2015, on Facebook made a death threat to the journalist Paolo Borrometi, writing that he would rip out his heart, fry it and eat it (see here).

The man convicted is the boss Venerando Lauretta considered by the investigators at the time of the threats to Borrometi, the acting head of the Mafia clan Carbonaro-Dominanate of Vittoria (Ragusa).

At the root of the threats were several articles with which Borrometi revealed several irregularities at the fruit and vegetable market of Vittoria which had led the authorities to block the commercial activities concerning Lauretta.

Now Venerando Lauretta has been found guilty of carrying out threats worsened by their Mafia method. He will have to pay compensation to the victim and to the civil parties (the amount will be determined by the civil court). In addition he will have to pay the legal costs (1500 euro to each party).

“I think today is a beautiful day for press freedom” Borrometi commented, reminding that in the past few months other persons linked to Mafia criminality (Francesco De Carolis and Giambattista Ventura) who had threatened him have been sentenced. “That constitutes , he said, an important precedent and a real victory.”

Borrometi thanked the police escort which had accompanied him since 2014 and the district anti-Mafia prosecutor of Catania “who , he said, several months ago discovered and foiled an attack which they had been organising with a car bomb against me and my police bodyguards.”

The Hon. Giulia Sarti, the M5S president of the Justice Commission of the Italian parliament’s lower chamber, remarked that “It is a splendid day for Borrometi, for press freedom and for legality.”

ASP