A bullet for Federica Angeli who will be again a key witness

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On the 19th April 2018 there will be a session of the trial in which the Spada family members of Ostia (Rome) are accused of attempted murder. The journalist was an eye-witness. Since then she has been living with a police escort

A few days before the trial – in which she will confirm the evidence of the shoot-out of which she was an eye-witness and hence on the 17th July 2018 ended up with a police escort – an envelope containing a bullet wrapped in two napkins had been sent to the journalist of La Repubblica Federica Angeli. The package had not been sent to her newspaper but to the Rome editorial offices of Il Fatto Quotidiano which published news of it on the 7th April 2018 explaining that they had received it a few days before. The newspaper wrote in its article, “Whoever sent the package got the wrong address or perhaps the wrong newspaper” (Read more).

The envelope with its hand-written address and with an almost illegible postage stamp has been retained by the Mobile Squad of the Police and by the Digos of Rome who are investigating the episode.

On the 19th February 2018 the journalist Federica Angeli had testified against Armando Spada, indicted for threats and violence towards her (read here). The intimidation goes back to May 2013 when Spada shut her up in a room of the beach pavilion “Orsa Maggiore” of Ostia where the journalist had gone, together with her two technicians, to ask for information about a change of management. He issued death threats to her.

On the 19th April however she will have to confirm in the courtroom what she saw on the evening of the 16th July 2013 from the balcony of her flat during a shoot-out between members of the crime gangs of Ostia (read here). For having witnessed it, the day after the shoot-out she was given a police escort which she still has (read here).

On her Facebook page the reporter has written, when the envelope with the bullet was received, “Do you want to make me feel that I was a target? I already knew. There was no need to go out of your way to warn me. Did you want to ruin my day and make my stomach churn? Ok. Well done. But tomorrow it will have gone. We need to have courage, even today. Even if they do everything to make us lose the desire to struggle. We are here. Standing upright.” On the 8th April again on Facebook, Angeli thanked everybody for the support she had received and wrote again, “I know it will be complicated to trace who has sent that bullet. But nothing is impossible.”

Many expressions of support for Federica Angeli. On Twitter the prime minister Paolo Gentiloni, the Mayor of Rome Virginia Raggi, the president of the Lazio region Nicola Zingaretti and the acting head of the Partito Democratico Maurizio Martina have stood by her. Close support has also been expressed by the editorial boards of the newspapers La Repubblica, Il Fatto Quotidiano and La Stampa.

The editor of La Repubblica, Mario Calabresi, stated that “The attacks and the intimidations do not frighten her and do not frighten us” whilst in an added note the Ordine dei giornalisti and the Federazione della Stampa state that, “Federica Angeli has no intention of stopping and we are beside her. For this on the 19th April we will be in the courtroom along with Usigrai, Articolo 21, No Gag and other associations for the trial in which Federica Angeli will be called as a witness” (read here).

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