The invective of Giuseppe Santalucia, president of the Anm, against Nordio: “On the Artem Uss case, goodbye liberal guarantee”

ROME. New episode in the cold war, but now almost hot, between the Minister of Justice, Carlo Nordio, and his former colleagues, the Italian magistrates. By now we are on the verge of invective, thanks to the disciplinary action that Nordio would like to activate against the three Milan judges who had sent the Russian fixer Artem Uss under house arrest. And it is on the edge of sarcasm. “Nothing is further than this affair from the liberal guarantee policies that many expected and in which some still trust, perhaps not to recognize the error of early enthusiasms that should have died out given the facts, and not now,” he says the president of the National Association of Magistrates, Giuseppe Santalucia, accompanied by the full consent of the steering committee of the ANM.

Obviously here the champion of liberal guaranteeism, not mentioned, should have been Nordio. But for the magistrates the story of Milan represents the unveiling of the true face of the minister. So goodbye to early enthusiasm.

Santalucia continues: “It cannot be kept silent that the indictment leveled against the magistrates of the Court of Appeal of Milan, in the terms in which it was built, is deliberately and evidently placed outside the confines in which the exercise of ministerial power is constitutionally permitted and required. A judge, a collegiate judge, is accused of not having fully accepted the deductions of the public prosecutor, no one envisages or even sketches a description of grave and inexcusable negligence”.

In practice, according to the top of the ANM, but of the entire Milanese judiciary, and not only, the minister is attacking independence and autonomy. And it concludes: “The Italian judiciary is ready and attentive, as always and without suffering any tiredness, in the reaffirmation not of its privileges but, allow me and it is by no means a joke, of the privileges that democracy ensures to the entire community”.

Almost a declaration of war. On the other hand, in Parliament, at the end of last April, Nordio himself had announced a battle, when he said: “No one can afford to charge the minister with invasive interference when he exercises his prerogatives to verify the compliance of the behavior of the magistrates with the duties of diligence . It is the duty of the ministry to proceed with the same criteria with which the prosecutors send the guarantee information to the citizens against whom they carry out the investigations “.