the fight against Organized Transnational Crime and Terrorism. The Italian Perspective disappeared in Berlin
Italian students scholars and activists protested against the lecture of the Italian Minister of Justice on "the fight against Organized Transnational Crime and Terrorism; an Italian Perspective”.at the Humboldt University in Berlin. The minister cancelled at the last moment.
“The Fight against Organized Transnational Crime and Terrorism. An Italian Perspective” was the title of the lecture organised by the Law Faculty of the Humboldt University in Berlin on Thursday the 14th of March 2011, where the Italian minister of justice, Angelino Alfano, had been invited as unique speaker. Martin Heger, Professor of criminal law, declared to the Tagesspiegel yesterday that critical questions would have been welcomed during the discussion after the minister’s speech.
The same newspaper, in the article of Andrea Dernbach, underlined the controversial position of Alfano about this topic, by reminding the fact that at the time when the minister was coordinator for the Sicily party Forza Italia, «he secured the majority of Totò Cuffaro, the Christian Democrat former regional president of Sicily, who was sentenced to seven years for having favored the Mafia.
Even after his first conviction to five years in prison in 2008 for crimes connected to the mafia, he had been supported by Alfano in the regional parliament. Alfano's name also reflects the bill ("Lodo Alfano") which the government approved in summer of 2008, barely three months after Alfano's appointment as Minister of Justice in Rome. The law should have excluded the Prime minister, the Parliament representative and the State President from any trials, but was declared illegitimate from the Constitutional Court».
Today at 10.30, the supposing starting time of the lecture, an Italian man took the microphone and said that this minister should have not be allowed to speak about the fight against transnational organised crime at the Humboldt university, as an expert or a scientist.
Most of the participants, who had planned a protest in the week before, through facebook, started repeating: “you have sworn on the constitution that you would have worked for the nation!”. They were showing signs which expressed their dissatisfaction with the government, and the disagreement as to the minister’s presence in such a very well known university.
At 10.40 the HU President Jan-Hendrik Olbertz informed the public that the minister had just cancelled his par ticipation because of important phone calls. A voice from the audience suggested “he’s coward”, the HU President did not disagree.
Martin Heger, the organizer of the lecture, went to the podium and had to answer all the questions participants would have raised to Alfano, but also why the Humboldt university decided to invite him as a speaker, with no cross-questions, and without having taken into consideration that in Italy there are many other experts with reference to the fight against organised crime and terrorism.
The goal of the protest was not acknowledging the authority of the minister to lecture in the university, and the fact he didn’t dare to show up fulfilled their expectations, but the Professor of criminal law, the HU President and some students complained about the lack of democratic exchanging of opinions caused by the minister absence.
