A prominent Italian investigative journalist has been targeted in a bomb attack, with the rudimentary but powerful device almost destroying his car and damaging a neighbour’s home.
Sigfrido Ranucci, who hosts Report, an investigative programme aired by the state broadcaster, Rai, said the explosion happened about 20 minutes after he returned to his home in Campo Ascolano, close to Rome, on Thursday night.
The explosion also partly destroyed a car belonging to Ranucci’s daughter. Nobody was injured in the attack and an investigation has been opened by anti-mafia police in Rome.
The bomb, possibly made from fireworks, was planted between two vases outside Ranucci’s home, according to reports in the Italian press on Friday morning, citing police sources. The device was not detonated remotely, the reports said, and had possibly been left with a lit fuse.
Ranucci, who for years has been under police protection owing to threats made against him, told reporters he heard “a tremendous bang”, adding that the blast was so powerful it could have killed a passerby.
Video footage of the aftermath posted by the Report programme on social media showed twisted metal and shattered car windows.
Ranucci said he had received so many threats that it would be difficult to trace who was behind the attack. “There’s an endless list of threats, of various kinds, which I’ve received and which I’ve always reported to the judicial authorities and which my security detail has always reported. But what happened last night was a worrying new level because it was right in front of my home, where bullets were found last year.”
Politicians from across the divide expressed solidarity with Ranucci, whose investigations have often targeted government ministers; he has criticised alleged political interference in Rai by Giorgia Meloni’s far-right administration, while several members of her coalition have sued Report.
Meloni condemned the attack as “a serious act of intimidation”. She said in a statement: “Freedom and independence of information are essential values of our democracies, which we will continue to defend.”
Elly Schlein, the leader of the opposition Democratic party, said the attack against Ranucci was an “attack on democracy and freedom of information”, adding: “We cannot accept any intimidation of investigative journalism.”
Matteo Piantedosi, the interior minister, said Ranucci’s security detail would be raised to the maximum level.
Massimiliano Capitanio, a commissioner at Agcom, Italy’s communications watchdog, said “attacking the freedom of expression is a vile terrorist act”, while the Fiom trade union said it was the result of “a climate of hatred” against Ranucci.
Ranucci has written a book about the Italian mafia and in 2021 he described how a former prisoner told him that mobsters “had given the order to kill” him after the book was published, but the hit “was stopped”.
On Sunday, he had announced the highlights of the forthcoming series of Report, including reports on the powerful ’Ndrangheta organised crime group in Calabria and Sicily’s Cosa Nostra.
Italy ranks 49th in the world for press freedom, according to Reporters Without Borders.
