(RSF/IFEX) – On 12 August 2002, RSF expressed its outrage over the imprisonment of former journalist Stefano Surace, aged 69, for supposed press crimes committed more than 30 years ago. The case is “doubly scandalous,” RSF Secretary-General Robert Ménard said in a letter to Italian President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi. “To sentence journalists to imprisonment for […]
(RSF/IFEX) – On 12 August 2002, RSF expressed its outrage over the imprisonment of former journalist Stefano Surace, aged 69, for supposed press crimes committed more than 30 years ago.
The case is “doubly scandalous,” RSF Secretary-General Robert Ménard said in a letter to Italian President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi. “To sentence journalists to imprisonment for press crimes is contrary to United Nations standards, and it is unworthy of a democratic country to jail an elderly man who has not been a journalist for many years for crimes that should be subject to limitation by lapse of time and which would nowadays not even be the subject of prosecution,” he said. “We call on you to intervene and pardon Stefano Surace so that he can be released,” Ménard stated, adding, “We also call for the removal of prison sentences for press crimes from Italian law, as recommended by the United Nations Commission on Human Rights and the special rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression.”
Surace, who was editor of the nonconformist newspaper “Le Ore” during the 1960s, has been incarcerated since December 2001 in Opera Prison, near Milan, where he is serving a sentence of two years, six months and 12 days, stemming from convictions for libel and obscenity handed down in 1963 and 1967. A resident of France for almost 40 years, he was arrested while visiting a friend in Italy.
Surace was known for his investigations of prison life and, while still a journalist, founded an association of former detainees. He had ceased working as a journalist before the convictions and is now a jiu-jitsu teacher.
