The
Guardian wrote that prosecutors in Palermo intercepted two conversations between Italian journalist Lorenzo Tondo and one of his sources. Tondo is following for the
Guardian the
trialagainst a man who for a year and a half is in jail in Sicily accusing him of being one of the most dangerous traffickers of humans, and which according to many credible versions and according to the same Round it would instead be a victim of an exchange of persons.
On Friday, November 10, during a court hearing, documents were deposited identifying Tondo as a Guardian's journalist who is "working on the case" by Medhanie Yehdego Mered, a 36-year-old man from Eritrea, accused of being one of the leaders of a large Libyan-based organization that runs migrant traffic to Europe and involved in travels of at least 13 thousand people. According to his lawyers, however, Medhanie Tesfamariam Berhe, Eritrean of 30 years arrested in 2016 in Sudan, extradited to Italy and then sentenced to trial. Among the papers filed in court on Friday there are the transcripts of two conversations intercepted between Tondo and Hayle Fishaye Tesfay, a Eritrean described as a friend of the detained man who has lived in Palermo for more than 20 years, who is a former interpreter and now works as a cleaning agent.
The Palermo Public Prosecutor's Office did not comment on the Guardian after the news of intercepted calls, but Tondo said the transcripts represented "a clear violation" of his "rights as a professional journalist." And again: "I see no reason to justify what has been done unless we try to discredit the Guardian's work . I am a professional journalist in Italy, I have a professional card. They can not reveal my sources or publish my conversations with them. But in these papers, let me know in the classroom, they identify a source and reveal that I'm using it to look for another source. It's an attack on investigative journalism. "