Italian president urges hard-line against neo-Nazi "monstrosities"

Rome (dpa) - Outbursts of neo-Nazism or antisemitism must be punished harshly, Italian President Giorgio Napolitano said Tuesday, two days after former premier Silvio Berlusconi outraged the country‘s Jewish community by praising former dictator Benito Mussolini.

Napolitano said there was "an ever wider" awareness among the Italian population that the persecution of Jews was "an aberration" and "a disgrace."

He said he was dismayed by "openly neo-Nazi miserable junk ideology" and "racism, yet again primarily anti-Jewish," circulating among some youth groups and football hooligans.

"These are monstrosities that even if only spoken call for the harshest response by the state," Napolitano said.

Last week, two members of the far-right Casa Pound group were jailed and five put under house arrest for beating up opponents, illegal detention of weapons and explosives and belonging to a subversive organization.

Media attention focused on their wiretapped conversations, where they discussed raping a Jewish girl and burning down a Jewish jeweller‘s shop.

Speaking on Holocaust Remembrance Day at the weekend, Berlusconi caused a stir by suggesting Mussolini had been pressured to adopt racial laws by Nazi Germany. Aside from that grave mistake, the 21-year Fascist regime "in many ways did well," Berlusconi said.

The former premier later toned down his remarks, stressing his "condemnation of dictatorships" and declaring himself a steadfast "friend of Israel."

According to James Walston, a politics professor at the American University of Rome, the media mogul-cum-politician had deliberately "made a very unpleasant grab for the far right vote" ahead of February 24-25 elections. dpa alv npr Author: Alvise Armellini