Almasri, Nordio "threatens" magistrate Piccirillo: "He allowed himself to point out the Ministry's errors. I don't rule out taking action."

He chose the conference organized by the Brothers of Italy party, "Talk about the Mafia," to launch new attacks on the judiciary, with which relations are now at an all-time low, threatening legal action against a judge.

Yet another clash has erupted between Justice Minister Carlo Nordio and the judiciary, this time over the now-infamous Almasri affair , the Libyan general arrested in Italy at dawn on January 19 in Turin and then released by the Italian government after 48 hours on a state flight to Tripoli, despite the warrant issued against him by the International Criminal Court in The Hague.

The Minister of Justice's intervention was extremely harsh. Nordio explained to the audience that "the other day, a serving magistrate dared to point out in a newspaper all the mistakes made by the minister in the Almasri case . For a magistrate to dare censor the things I did in a newspaper—in any other country in the world, they would have called the nurses. It could be subject to evaluation ," with an obvious threat of initiating disciplinary proceedings initiated by the ministry (disciplinary action, in any case, falls to the Attorney General of the Supreme Court—editor's note).

He then broadens the argument to indiscriminately target the judiciary, adding that "magistrates believe they enjoy such impunity that they can say whatever they want. This will remain the case until we implement a reform because there are no penalties for improper flooding."

Nordio is referring to a speech by Supreme Court magistrate Raffaele Piccirillo , who until the Meloni government took office held key roles at the Ministry of Justice, from Director General of Criminal Justice to Head of the Department of Justice Affairs and finally Chief of Staff.

In an interview with Repubblica, Piccirillo criticized the procedures followed by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the case of Libyan Almasri, underlining that " there were no valid legal reasons for not validating the arrest and not handing him over to the International Criminal Court ."

Nordio's threats have sparked outrage within the National Association of Magistrates (ANM). The secretary of the Area group, Giovanni Zaccaro , pointed out that the minister "is taking advantage of a debate on the Mafia to intimidate magistrates who dare criticize his work. He has dropped his mask: his role model is Trump, who fires magistrates who investigate his friends. Fortunately, Italy still has the Constitution, which has allowed the judiciary to resist intimidation by terrorism, the Mafia, and economic and media powers."

Ernesto Carbone, a lay member of the CSM, also took the same line: "Minister Nordio is missing no opportunity to delegitimize the judiciary today. This morning, he inappropriately threatened a magistrate, Dr. Piccrillo, with disciplinary action. Dr. Piccirillo's fault? Commenting on the Almasri affair. Rather than shed light on this murky affair, the minister prefers to intimidate a magistrate."