An Italian army general who racially profiled Nigerian-born volleyball player Paola Egonu and slated same sex individuals in a book he wrote, has been suspended by Italy’s defence ministry.
He was said to have breached army neutrality with the book critics said insulted sexual and ethnic minorities.
.Vannacci’s book released in August 2023, “The World Backwards”, contained passages in which he denounced the “dictatorship of minorities”.
He wrote that gay people were not “normal”, and also that Egonu, while she had Italian citizenship, “her features do not represent Italian-ness.”
He was criticised by those on the left and the right, including those surrounding Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, leader of the post-Fascist Brothers of Italy party.
Roberto Vannacci, 55, had already been ousted last year from the management of the Military Geographical Institute, and moved to an essentially administrative role as chief of staff of the operational land forces command.
He has now been suspended from that position for 11 months, with the resulting “halving of his salary”, his lawyer Giorgio Carta said.
The defence ministry accuses Vannacci of “a lack of a sense of responsibility” and of neutrality, “compromising the prestige and the reputation of the administration to which he belongs”, his lawyer told AFP.
He said Vannacci would contest the sanction in an administrative court, arguing for “the right to free expression guaranteed to all citizens, including the military”.
Vannacci is the subject of three separate investigations, including one for allegedly inciting racial hatred and another for defamation against the athlete Egonu.
A third investigation is unrelated to his book, relating to alleged financial irregularities during his posting as military attache to the Italian embassy in Moscow in 2021-22. AFP
