The Albany Gazette - Italy's far-right line up to defend jeweller who killed robbers

Mario Roggero, 72, was sentenced last week to nearly 15 years in jail for killing robbers who had held his family at gun-point in 2021. The guns proved to be fakes.

As they carried off the loot, Roggero followed them. He shot one thief dead in the getaway car, before catching and beating to death a second one. The third, shot in the leg, survived.

The case has triggered calls for an easing of the law on legitimate defence from both Italy's new far-right political force, National Future (FN), and the League, a member of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni's ruling coalition, which has been hemorrhaging support.

Both the League and FN submitted bills to parliament this week.

"Between robbers and exasperated citizens who defend themselves, we on the true right will clearly always be on the side of good," FN deputy Rossano Sasso said Wednesday as his party presented its bill.

Not to be outdone, League head Salvini visited jeweller Mario Roggero twice in prison and suggested he could run for the party at the election.

For some analysts, however, this is a transparent campaign ploy ahead of the 2027 ballot.

- 'Vannacci summer' -

"It's a case of competition on the right," Giovanni Orsina, political scientist at Rome's Luiss University, told AFP.

"Between a new party that is growing strongly in the polls... and the old party, which is seeing its polling numbers eaten away by the new party, and which is reacting by hardening its positions," he added.

FN is currently polling at 6.7 percent of voter intentions, ahead of Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini's League on 5.5 percent, according to a survey published Monday by pollster SWG.

FN founder Roberto Vannacci is a former army general who disparages migrants, feminists and LGBTQ+ people.

He is targeting voters disenchanted not just with Salvini but also Meloni who, while she has radical far-right roots, has taken a more pragmatic approach in office.

FN's surge in the polls since its February launch is complicating Meloni's calculations for next year's ballot.

With Salvini's League waning, analysts say she may be forced into an electoral pact with Vannacci.

Referring to the jeweller's case, Orsina said FN was "very lucky to stumble upon something like this.

He predicted a "Vannacci summer" in which the general dominates political discourse and the media.

- Threats, insults -

While Meloni limited herself to criticising the length of Roggero's sentence, Defence Minister Guido Crosetto -- a co-founder of her hard-right Brothers of Italy (FdI) party -- went further.

"What happened to Roggero was unjust," he said.

Justice Minister Carlo Nordio -- another Brothers of Italy deputy -- submitted a plea with Italy's president to pardon the jeweller.

The opposition condemned the move as an attempt to strong-arm the president.

As the political temperature rose, the National Association of Magistrates (ANM) sounded the alarm.

They said the judges who had handled Roggero's two failed appeals and definitive conviction were receiving "threats, insults and hate messages in a climate in which they are attacked simply for applying state law regarding murder and self defence".

Riccardo Magi, head of the centre-left opposition More Europe (+Europa) party, slammed the "populist pressure campaign" for a pardon

It was "now a race (on the right) to see who can come out with the most outrageous claims", he told AFP.

"By now, Vannacci seems to be the true leader of the Italian right -- the leader-in-waiting, the one who is set to take the helm -- and the others are following his proposals," he added.

(E.Taylor--TAG)