Anti-migrant League heavyweight
Roberto Calderoli's 2013 description of Italy's first black
minister Cecile Kyenge as an orangutan is not covered by
parliamentary privilege, the Constitutional Court ruled Friday,
upholding an appeal from a Bergamo court.
Calderoli, a former deputy Senate Speaker and former minister
for reforms, is being tried for defamation in the case.
Kyenge, a doctor born in the Democratic Republic of Congo,
became Italy's first black minister in 2013 when she was sworn
into ex-premier Enrico Letta's cabinet. She is now an MEP.
In 2014 Kyenge invited Calderoli to make a pilgrimage to the
Congolese village where he claimed her father placed a hex on
him.
Calderoli, a former minister for reforms and simplification
under ex-premier Silvio Berlusconi, told weekly magazine Oggi
that he needed an exorcist to lift the 'macumba' allegedly
placed on him in Kyenge's native village in Democratic Republic
of Congo.
Calderoli is facing criminal charges of defamation aggravated
by racial hatred and discrimination against Kyenge.
Since making the remark he underwent six operations, was
twice in intensive care, broke two ribs and two fingers, and his
mother died, according to the Oggi interview.
The run of apparent bad luck culminated with the discovery
of a two-meter snake in his kitchen.
"Maybe it's time to send Kyenge's dad a message of detente,"
Calderoli told the magazine.
"It seems to me that I am still being persecuted," replied
Kyenge at the time.
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