The official was arrested in Italy on January 19 but released two days later on a technicality and flown back to Libya on a State flight to a hero’s welcome.
Speaking on his evening talk show ‘Five minutes’ on the first channel of State broadcaster RAI Thursday night, Vespa said countries do “very dirty things” for national security.
“In every country very dirty things are done for national security, including negotiating with torturers”, said Vespa.
His comments on Friday were slammed by RAI State broadcaster’s union USIGRAI.
The union said in a note that Vespa’s statements “cannot be the trait identifying Rai1’s journalistic analysis”.
“This is not information but propaganda that smacks of regime”, it noted.
Vespa responded Friday that he could “only forgive Usigrai for the ignorance” and said the left-leaning populist Five-Star Movement (M5S) led by ex-premier Giuseppe Conte, whose members in RAI’s parliamentary oversight panel criticized his words, “should very well know that morally questionable operations are made in each State by governments of every colour for reasons of national security”, speaking to ANSA.
“With all due respect, rather than reporting me to RAI’s parliamentary oversight panel, they should ask (Italian intelligence service parliamentary oversight body) COPASIR for clarifications”, he also told ANSA.
“RAI is increasingly less a public service and increasingly more biased information”, said Green-Left Alliance (AVS) Senate whip Peppe De Cristofaro, a member of RAI’s parliamentary oversight panel.
De Cristofaro added that TV hosts had become “mouthpieces of the government in programmes tailored to defend (Premier) Giorgia Meloni”.

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