ROME -- FAO chief economist Maximo Torero has opened a new chapter in the UN agency’s attempts to silence the Italian Insider by denouncing the newspaper’s chief editor to Italian police for allegedly threatening his life in an article about how the assistant director general has irked donor country diplomats by interfering in areas outside his expertise.

 A formal investigation by an Italian investigating judge into the article has been concluded and it is expected that a preliminary hearing will be held  at the Rome Tribunal to decide whether Insider editor in chief John Phillips should be sent for trial on the absurd charges of threatening the life of the Peruvian senior hungercrat, judicial sources said.

 The NGO Reporters without Borders (RSF) in the past strongly criticised the FAO for sueing Phillips and bringing charges of criminal libel against him for allegedly damaging the image of the UN agency. The legal harassment clearly was aimed at trying to close down the newspaper, the only media to report on the UN food agencies in Rome, RSF said. Money earmarked by donors for the FAO was used to pay expensive Italian  lawyers representing the organization to sue Phillips, who was ordered to pay as much as 95,000 euros in legal costs and advanced civil damages.

Torero’s lawyers based their claim that Italian Insider was threatening Torero by twisting totally out of context quotes in the article from a veteran observer of the fao, a senior Latin American diplomat who spoke on condition he not be named.

“It seems like Qu is the president and Maximo is the CEO,” the veteran observer said, “this is creating an imbalance in other management areas. In an authoritarian state the president might resolve the matter by having someone like that shot.”

 “it is unclear if the DG knows all the details or the consequences,” the observer added.

The implication of the article clearly was that the diplomat was suggesting Qu should fire Torero, not that he or anyone else should really shoot him.

 Torero’s denuncia and legal suit for alleged threats to himself via an article has reached a new low in the FAO’s fruitless efforts to prevent the Italian Insider reporting on the agency by mounting personal attacks against Phillips in violation of the UN charter’s commitment to press freedom.

 Despite the sky high cost of defending against the barrage of legal harassment by the FAO, the Insider will continue to report on croneyism, nepotism and other abuses at the UN agencies in the public interest.

jf