Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s followers on Tuesday pounced on the attack in which he was injured, blaming his political enemies and courtroom adversaries for inciting the violence, and announcing plans for new restrictions on demonstrations and the Internet.
In a tumultuous debate, the leader of Berlusconi’s parliamentary party in the chamber of deputies, Fabrizio Cicchitto, said: “The hand of he who attacked Berlusconi was primed by a pitiless campaign of hatred.”
Cicchitto went on to name the organizations and individuals he said were behind it.
Top of the list was the group that owns the daily newspaper La Repubblica and the weekly magazine L’Espresso, which earlier this year made the running in coverage of successive sex scandals involving Italy’s prime minister. Next came a new, radical daily, Il Fatto, which Cicchitto described as “the morning paper of the prosecution service.” After losing his immunity from prosecution in October, Berlusconi now faces trial for bribery and fraud.
The leader of the majority in the lower house then singled out Marco Travaglio, author of a recently re-published book about Berlusconi’s links with the mafia, whom he denounced as a “media terrorist.” Finally, Cicchitto pointed the finger at “certain prosecutors who go on television” and two of Italy’s opposition parties, including the biggest, the Democratic party, whose leader, Pierluigi Bersani, visited Berlusconi in hospital on Monday.
Italian Minister of the Interior Roberto Maroni announced that tomorrow’s Cabinet meeting would discuss two new bills, one dealing with demonstrations and the other with “groups on the Internet who laud the prime minister’s assailant.” These, he said, “represent an out-and-out instigation to crime. We are considering shutdowns, with solutions I intend to table at the next cabinet meeting.”
Berlusconi was set to be released yesterday after spending a third night in hospital, but will be under doctors’ orders to forgo public duties for two weeks.
He thanked well-wishers from his hospital bed on Tuesday, in his first public statement since the assailant struck him in the face with a souvenir replica of Milan’s cathedral.
“I say to all of you, stay calm and happy. Love always triumphs over hate and envy,” Berlusconi said.
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