Italian MP causes outrage with ‘neo-terrorist’ slur

Italy’s parliament descended into uproar after a right-wing politician described a young Italian woman who converted to Islam while held hostage in Somalia as a “neo-terrorist.”

Opposition League Party MP Alessandro Pagano was reprimanded by fellow politicians and the Vatican after directing his remarks at Silvia Romano, a 25-yearold aid worker who was held for 18 months by Somali Islamist militants. Romano was freed last weekend after a joint operation by Italian, Turkish and Somali intelligence services.

House Speaker Roberto Fico accused Pagano of using “unacceptable words of hatred,” while the ruling center-left Democratic Party called on the League to apologize. The Vatican daily newspaper L’Osservatore said that the attack on Romano had shown a “inhuman gaze.”

“This story is full of pain — all you have to do is look,” it said.

Police in Milan are investigating an online hate campaign against Romano and are patrolling the residential street where she lives. A bottle was thrown against the window of her parent’s flat after she returned from 18 months as a captive of the Somali Al-Shabab group.

The aid worker was passed on to the militants by a kidnapping gang who snatched her in November 2018 in Kenya. At the time she was a volunteer at an Italian-run orphanage near the tourist resort of Malindi.

Romano’s conversion to Islam has drawn social media attacks and claims that she has failed to condemn Al-Shabab.

She has also been accused of traveling to a terror hotspot without proper protection and inadvertently funding terrorism.

Italy’s Foreign Minister, Luigi Di Maio, said that “spine-chilling things have been said about Romano, they have gone beyond any acceptable limit.”