He shoots and wounds the burglar but is not under investigation thanks to the new law. Meloni: 'Defence is always legitimate'

'Defence is always legitimate'. Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has no doubts when commenting on the case of a man in Rovigo who wounded a burglar during an attempted robbery in his home and is not under investigation under the new rules on self-defence.

The Prime Minister was immediately echoed by Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini, reviewing the rules wanted by the League on the mitigation of excessive self-defence that led the Public Prosecutor's Office not to enter the intruder in the register of suspects. "Regulations," Salvini said, "to protect decent citizens" because, "as we have been arguing for years, defence is always legitimate".

The details of the reconstruction of the episode, however, outline a situation in which the victim of the intrusion ran the risk of being hit with a weapon - a screwdriver - and of having aimed without intending to kill. Two elements that the Prosecutor of the Republic of Rovigo, Manuela Fasolato, has highlighted in a note in which she reiterates that she is not proceeding for the crime of excessive self-defence, but only for the attempted aggravated robbery of the wounded and still wanted criminal.

"The offended person," Fasolato wrote in a note, "shot, aiming at non-vital parts, with a duly registered weapon, in order to defend himself against a person disguised in a balaclava who was inside his home, in the dark, and who was trying to hit him with a screwdriver, despite the fact that the alarm had been triggered, and that the offended person had already warned loudly that he was armed, and had invited those inside his home to leave.

This case falls within the scope of the new Article 52 of the Penal Code, which states that 'a person shall not be punished if he has committed the offence because he was compelled to do so by the need to defend his own right or the right of others against the actual danger of an unjust offence' and specifies the proportionality of the case 'if he uses a weapon lawfully possessed' to defend 'his own or others' safety' and 'his own or others' property, when there is no desistance and there is danger of aggression'.