The horrible story of an Italian journalist harassed and then suicide

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The publisher Pietro Citrigno had received a 4 months sentence for coercive intimidation. Now the sentence is expunged. The entrepreneur was the owner of the daily ‘Calabria Ora’ and ‘L’Ora della Calabria’, newspapers now closed, in which Alessandro Bozzo worked until dead

OSSIGENO 23^rd December 2022 – In mid-November 2022, the Italian Supreme Court decreed the statute of limitations applied to the sentence imposed, following two levels of judgment, on the Cosenza entrepreneur Pietro Citrigno, found guilty of coercive intimidation towards the journalist Alessandro Bozzo, editor of ‘Calabria Ora ‘ and then of ‘L’Ora della Calabria’, newspapers now closed when they were owned by the defendant. The reporter committed suicide with a gunshot on the 15^th March 2013, in his house in Marano Principato, in the province of Cosenza, following a state of distress caused by professional demotion and the harassing behaviour of the publisher. These circumstances had been highlighted during the trial by reading the reporter’s diaries, kept in the editorial office and which the publisher himself had delivered to the family (read here).

Pietro Citrigno had been sentenced to a four-month sentence at the end of the first two levels of judgment (see Ossigenohere), and the final verdict of the Supreme Court was awaited after the appeal presented by his lawyers, Saverio Loiero and Salvatore Staiano. As the lawyer Nicola Rendace, the reporter’s family lawyer, points out to Ossigeno, the Supreme Court had declared the appeal inadmissible, making the sentence final (it would have been the first against a publisher for private violence) but then, following the additional brief presented by the defence counsel of the former publisher, the Court confirmed the statute of limitations. In mid-January 2023 the judgement will take effect.

“A punch in the stomach”. This was the effect of the annulment of the sentence of the publisher Pietro Citrigno on the journalist of La Repubblica’ Lucio Luca, who wrote a book on the story of Alessandro Bozzo, “4 cents a line. Dying of journalism”, published by Zolfo with a preface by Attilio Bolzoni. “And so Citrigno – concludes Lucio Luca -, thanks to a clever move by his lawyers, will have been neither definitively convicted nor acquitted of that accusation, despite the two convictions in the first and second degree”.

THE SISTER of the deceased journalist, Marianna Bozzo, thanks Ossigeno and declares: “There is bitterness, but I am happy to know that this story matters not only to us family members. The paradox is that Alessandro had a long apprenticeship as a worker without job security. When he obtained a contract and turned pro, the paper he worked for fired him. Eventually ‘Calabria Ora’, with a real contract, article 1, and then again threats, coercive  pressures  and a return to job insecurity. A great humiliation, a scandalous injustice. It could have gone differently for him; above all no one should be allowed to suffer so much to do their job”. LT

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Lucio Luca, the expunging of the sentence of the publisher Citrigno is a punch in the stomach

FROM OSSIGENO ARCHIVE

Calabria: I remember that smile of Alessandro Bozzo like this

Calabria: A reporter’s suicide. Citrigno editor investigated

Former publisher sentenced for coercive intimidation of suicide reporter

Calabria: book dedicated to Alessandro Bozzo published