The quake leveled three towns, killed almost 300 people and left some 4,000 people homeless.
Advertisement
An Italian town heavily hit by last month’s quake is taking legal action against Charlie Hebdo, after it portrayed victims as pasta dishes.
Charlie Hebdo’s controversial cartoon, titled “earthquake Italian style”, showed a bloody man described as penne tomato sauce, an injured woman as penne gratinee, and bodies stacked between layers of rubble as lasagne.
After Italians responded angrily, the magazine, famed for its provocative, taboo-busting cartoons, published a second one, showing a person half-buried under rubble saying: ‘Italians.it’s not Charlie Hebdo who built your homes, it’s the mafia!’
Mario Cicchetti, a lawyer who represents Amatrice, said that he lodged the complaint about the “macabre” cartoons at the prosecutors’ office in Rieti, the provincial capital.
“I respect freedom of satire and irony but I can also say I have the freedom to say that (the Charlie Hebdo quake cartoon) stinks”, said Senate Speaker Pietro Grasso.
“The cartoons are macabre, senseless and incomprehensible”, Mr Cicchetti said, contending that they express “contempt for victims of a natural disaster”. “Criticism, including through satire, is an inviolable right both in Italy and France, but not everything can be ‘satire, ‘ and in this case the two cartoons offend the memory of all victims of the quake, survivors and the city of Amatrice”, he added. “They each lost three, four people – relatives, children, fathers and mothers, sisters and brothers, friends”, Cicchetti said.
Amatrice, where most of the 295 victims lived, filed an aggravated defamation complaint against the satirical French weekly magazine.
Advertisement
Italian prosecutors are investigating whether breaches of building regulations could be partly to blame for the devastation. Based on those findings they can either seek trial indictments or dismiss the complaint.
