What is the pact that binds us to the Libyans? Meloni should stop putting on a show and explain to the country.

It's not necessary to invoke the more or less militant anti-fascist movement to note the close connection between the post in which Giorgia Meloni assumed full and personal responsibility for the decision to free the wanted Libyan torturer Almasri and Benito Mussolini 's historic parliamentary speech of January 3, 1925. Mussolini, too, triumphantly ending the crisis that followed the Matteotti assassination, had claimed full responsibility for all the fascists' actions. The tone is identical, the script very similar, the rhetoric perfectly overlapping.

"If Fascism was nothing but castor oil and a truncheon, and not the proud passion of the finest Italian youth, I am to blame! " thundered Mussolini. And again: "If Fascism was a criminal organization, I am the leader of this organization." "I assert that this government acts cohesively under my leadership: every decision, especially this important, is agreed upon. It is therefore absurd to ask that Piantedosi, Nordio, and Mantovano be tried, and not me too, before them," Meloni duets a century later. This bold assumption of responsibility, however, entails several consequences. The first and foremost is to resoundingly expose the very ministers the prime minister seeks to shield. They had repeatedly said that Almasri had been released solely due to procedural flaws, without any decision from above to that effect. They had advanced bureaucratic excuses, inadequate documentation, and such delays that they forced the release, obviously reluctantly, of the criminal pursued by an international arrest warrant. The prime minister, however, points to a specific political choice, one she made before anyone else: "I reiterate the correctness of the entire Executive's actions, which had as its sole compass the protection of the safety of Italians."

However lame and often contradictory, the tale told by Nordio and Piantedosi did not establish the prime minister's co-responsibility as certain, despite the very strong doubts on the matter. Meloni's belligerent post resolves any doubts. At this point, Rome's prosecutor , Lo Voi, is practically obligated to request proceedings against her as well. The explicit reference to defending the national interest could lead to the imposition of state secrecy. However, it is highly unlikely that a shrewd politician like Giorgia would invoke secrecy after the request for indictment: the damage to her reputation would be lethal. Therefore, Parliament will vote and reject the requests for authorization to proceed against ministers Nordio and Piantedosi and against the prime minister's trusted undersecretary, Mantovano, perhaps even before the Rome prosecutor's office has submitted a request against the person primarily responsible for Almasri's release. Imagining a different outcome, reviving Minister Lattanzio 's resignation when another war criminal, Herbert Kappler , escaped from the Celio military hospital in 1977, would be futile. Lattanzio's resignation did not imply a government crisis. In this case, it would be inevitable. Waiving immunity, invoked by the opposition without even the slightest belief, would mean exposing themselves to very heavy sentences. The outcome of the vote is already a foregone conclusion.

But the same cannot be said about the debate that will precede that vote. Up to this point, the government has always shielded itself with technical errors. It has always denied having intentionally released the torturer . It has used pettifogging alibis. The prime minister's statement sweeps all of this aside. If the safety of the country and its inhabitants was at stake, the person primarily responsible for the decision made in those days has the obligation to explain the reasons, without hiding them behind the excuse of expired stamp duty or dossiers arriving on the Minister of Justice's desk too late. The prime minister clearly has no intention of taking this step. Until now, she has consistently refused to discuss the extremely thorny case, and it's a safe bet she'll try again. She promises to confirm the political, not formal, correctness of the release by "sitting next to Piantedosi, Nordio, and Mantovano at the vote on the authorization to proceed."

It can't be enough. Giorgia must not sit near or far from her ministers. She must speak and explain. She must reveal the unspeakable interests that bind Italy to Libyan gangs of traffickers and torturers. What makes them so precious that they cannot be touched without jeopardizing the safety of all Italians. It's all too clear that those close ties stem from the wicked agreements with various Libyan gangs to stop migrants, and that this is precisely the unspeakable aspect of this sordid affair. On this, Giorgia Meloni must be pressed and forced to truly expose herself, before Parliament and the country. But the opposition is burdened by an original sin: those agreements weren't invented by the right, but by a Minister of the Interior with a Democratic Party card in his pocket, Marco Minniti.

FROM

David Romoli