CNN — (CNN) — Italy’s high court has ruled that fascist salutes at rallies are legal unless they threaten public order or risk reinstating the country’s outlawed fascist political parties. .
Several Italian opposition politicians and Jewish community leaders have criticized the ruling and are planning rallies against it, according to local media reports.
The ruling comes after more than 150 men gave a fascist salute (also known as the “Roman salute”) in central Rome to commemorate the murder of two members of a far-right youth group on January 7, 1978. ) The decision comes almost two weeks after a video showing the man in action was released.
The High Court’s ruling, handed down on Thursday, comes after a recent January 7 rally in front of the former headquarters of the neo-fascist Italian Socialist Movement (MSI) party, where Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni launched her political campaign. It’s irrelevant. career. No arrests have been made in connection with this rally, and the investigation is still ongoing.
In handing down the sentence, the court ordered a second trial against eight men convicted of giving a salute at a 1975 event commemorating the killing of a militant belonging to the neo-fascist Casa Pound movement in Milan in 2016. The court ordered the opening of the second appeal hearing. Their 2016 convictions were upheld on initial appeal.
A date for the second appeal has not yet been set. The new ruling will have to be applied to lower court rulings, and the focus will then be on whether there was a threat to security or whether the salute was aimed at winning back Italy’s fascist party.
Under Italy’s three-tier system, all criminal cases pass through three levels. Automatic appeal or second degree and the Casazione High Court will decide whether the case should be returned to the appellate level or become final and closed.
“The Court of Cassation ruled that the Roman salute is not a crime unless there is a concrete danger of rebuilding the Fascist Party as provided for in Article 5 of the Law of Sherba, or unless there is a concrete aim of racial discrimination and violence. “We have proven that there is no such thing. That’s what the Mancino Law says,” a lawyer for two defendants, Domenico Di Tullio, told CNN.
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