Lino Jannuzzi


Lino Jannuzzi is an Italian journalist and politician.

Biography

Jannuzzi began his journalistic career at L'Espresso and in 1967, together with his colleague Eugenio Scalfari, published the investigation on the military secret services involved in the attempted coup known as Piano Solo. General Giovanni de Lorenzo, the mind behind the Piano Solo, sued both Jannuzzi and Scalfari: the two journalists managed to avoid prison thanks to the parliamentary immunity offered in 1968 by the Italian Socialist Party, with which Scalfari was elected to the Chamber of Deputies and Jannuzzi to the Senate.
After this first political experience, Jannuzzi returned to journalism and in 1979 was one of the founders of Radio Radicale.
From 2001 to 2008, Jannuzzi held once again a seat in the Senate, elected with Silvio Berlusconi's Forza Italia, who granted him parliamentary immunity from several judicial controversies he was involved in.
He is currently a columnist for Panorama and for Il Giornale.

Judicial events

At the end of the 1990s, Jannuzzi was investigated for some articles in which he expressed numerous criticisms of the Neapolitan magistracy concerning the case of Enzo Tortora, considered as a victim of a very serious judicial error. In 2002, Jannuzzi was sentenced to two years, five months and ten days of imprisonment for press defamation, and in 2004 he was forced to serve his sentence, transformed into a home detention sentence. One year later, in 2005, President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi signed a provision of grace for Jannuzzi.

Journalistic campaigns against the judges of Palermo

On 19 October 1991, Jannuzzi accused judge Giovanni Falcone, who was trying to get the licenses to create a power of contrast against the Mafia associations, of being the main responsible for the inability of the country institutions to fight Cosa Nostra.

Journalistic campaigns against the judges of Milan

On 20 December 2001, Jannuzzi wrote on Panorama, after having written it on Il Giornale, that there was a plot against Silvio Berlusconi organised by several judges from Milan who, according to the words of Jannuzzi, tried to define strategies in order to arrest Berlusconi. Without any kind of evidence of the plot, Jannuzzi, Mondadori and the publishing house of Il Giornale were all sued, with the last two sentenced to a total reimbursement of 350,000 euros.