Veneto: 10 years ago a Mafia attack on a journalist failed

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The target was Monica Andolfatto of Il Gazzettino for her articles. The plan came to light in February 2019 from the accounts of the anti-camorra investigation “At Least”.

In 2009, several members of organized crime wanted to intimidate, with gunshots the journalist Monica Andolfatto of the newspaper Gazzettino di Venezia to block her accurate job as a crime reporter and legal affairs journalist who highlighted the activity of criminal clans in the Veneto region. This came out ten years later, from court documents on the recent anti-Camorra operation “At Least” conducted by the DDA (District Anti-Mafia Directorate) of Venice. On the 19th February 2019 the investigations led to the arrest of 50 people, accused in various ways of criminal association of a Mafia nature and other crimes. The news caused a sensation. The journalist has received numerous expressions of solidarity.

Monica Andolfatto still works at the Il Gazzettino newspaper in Venice and is the secretary of the Veneto Journalists’ Union.

The episode was uncovered from a phone interception arranged by the investigators during the investigations. An entrepreneur, accused of being the boss of the criminal organization linked to the powerful Casalesi Camorra clan, had ordered a third person to let off gunshots against the reporter, to scare her. The plan was not implemented because the person charged with carrying it out was arrested. Moreover, from the records, it emerged that in 2011, after the publication of other articles on the so-called “Casalesi di Eraclea”, members of the clan considered the idea of ​​acting to intimidate the journalist.

Eraclea is a municipality in the province of Venice. Among the 50 people arrested on the 19th February 2019 there is Mirco Mestre, the mayor of Eraclea, accused of electoral vote buying that is to have received votes in exchange for favours from the clan. In 2016, Mirco Mestre was elected by defeating his opponent by only 81 votes. After his arrest the mayor resigned. On March 5th 2019, the City Council met to discuss the resignation of the mayor. Video operators and photojournalists were not admitted to the meeting hall. Monica Andolfatto and the president of the Order of Journalists of the Veneto, Gianluca Amadori, commented: “The administrators would do better to worry about the Mafia instead of the reporters”.

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