ROME - Italy’s Interior Minister, Matteo Salvini, launched a lawsuit alleging defamation against anti mafia writer Roberto Saviano on Friday for the content of his Facebook posts, but the author insists he “has no fear”.

 Salvini’s complaint refers to two posts “detrimental to his reputation”; one published on June 12 in which Saviano mentions his young escort, and one from June 22 in which the writer names Salvini the “minister of the underworld”.

 The minister has angrily commented on how the statements have had a strong impact in the media and in both the national and foreign press. He denounced how the claims lie “beyond any kind of law or rights that critics have; I have suffered a blatant aggression towards my self; I have been shamed and humiliated. This openly crosses the regulations put into being by the cabinet I belong to.”

 The Facebook debate continued, as Saviano wrote that “The minister of the underworld has decided to quarrel with me. I haven’t had any official communication, so I don’t know yet who will be be the judge of the investigation, but as soon as I know I will be questioned. Today there’s no need to back down in front of a power that fears critical voices and eye witnesses of the wickedness that is carried out every day in the Mediterranean and that is confirmed daily by force, a force that creates fear and restricts personal freedom.

 “I have never done this before, but I ask you all to be with me in this fight; behind this there lies Putin’s Russia, a model for the minister of the underworld that has often brought conflict and disagreement to extreme consequences. It’s time for men of a decent kind to resist the advance of authoritarianism, even while the Minister tries to create fear by putting the whole of the government against a single writer. I’m sure that in this ‘government of no change’ no one will say a word, all of them as they are, clinging onto power. But I have no fear.”

 jp-cb