Lirio Abbate
Abbate at the International Journalism Festival, 2011
Born1971 (age 52–53)
Castelbuono, province of Palermo
NationalityItalian
Occupation(s)Journalist, Editor-in-chief
Employers

Lirio Abbate (born 26 February 1971, in Castelbuono) is an Italian journalist and editor-in-chief of the Italian weekly news magazine L'Espresso. Before joining the magazine, he was a correspondent from Sicily for the news agency ANSA and the national newspaper La Stampa.

He was born in Castelbuono in the province of Palermo, and started his journalistic career in 1990 at the Giornale di Sicilia where he remained until 1997 when he moved to ANSA. In 1998 he also started working for La Stampa. In 2003 he was elected Journalist of the Year by Unione Nazionale Cronisti (Unci). He reported on the Mafia and clandestine immigration on the Sicilian coast. He was the only journalist to be present during the arrest in April 2006 of the "boss of bosses" of Cosa Nostra, Bernardo Provenzano, who was jailed after 43 years on the run.[1]

Abbate angered the Mafia with a book published in 2007 with colleague Peter Gomez called I Complici ("The Accomplices") about links between politicians and Bernardo Provenzano. When over police wiretaps heard mafiosi were heard discussing how to silence Abbate in revenge for his news reports and book, police decided to give him and his wife a police escort.[2]

On the night of September 2, 2007, his police bodyguards surprised two men placing a home-made bomb under his car. This murder attempt came a few days after he had returned to Palermo and after several months of threats following the publication of his book.[3][4][5]

Mafia boss Leoluca Bagarella threatened him publicly during a trial in October 2007. “I have been more worried since this case,” said Abbate. “Bagarella sent a message to his accomplices giving my name in open court. He has been in prison since 1995 and since I work for a news agency, my articles are not by-lined. How did he know that it was me who had written any particular article?”[3]

Despite the threats and police escort Abbate has not left Palermo. "If I left after they put a bomb under my car, I would be setting a bad example to other Sicilians," he said. "This way I am showing that I am not afraid, that the state is protecting me, and that I will carry on."[2] In 2009, however, Abbate left Palermo to work in Rome.

He created and wrote the docufilm L'uomo Nero - Storia di Massimo Carminati for LA7,[6] and for Sky Atalantic he wrote and edited the docu-series Barrio Milano[7] on Latin American gangs in the Lombardy capital.[8]

Il Presidente della Repubblica, motu proprio, nel 2015 gli ha conferito l'onorificenza di Ufficiale dell'Ordine al merito della Repubblica italiana.[9]

In January 2016 he was appointed editor-in-chief responsible for the "Investigations" and "Current affairs" sections of L'Espresso. In 2016 he was coordinator of the team that created the protected RegeniLeaks platform for L'Espresso to collect testimonies from whistleblowers on torture and human rights violations, to demand justice for Giulio Regeni and for all the victims of the security services Egyptians, in collaboration with the Hermes Center for Transparency and Digital Human Rights.[10][11]

From 2016 to 2017 he was part of the International Council on Justice of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development of the Vatican, chaired by Cardinal Peter K.A. Turkson.[12]

Since 29 November 2017 he has been deputy director of the weekly L'Espresso, of which he has become director since 4 March 2022, replacing the resigning Marco Damilano.[13] On 21 December 2022 he was replaced as director by Alessandro Mauro Rossi.[14]

Bibliography

  • (in Italian) Nostra mafia dei monti - dal processo alle cosche delle Madonie al caso Contrada, Spoleto: Dharba Editore 1993
  • (in Italian) La storia del giro podistico di Castelbuono - La corsa su strada più antica d'Italia, Palermo: Promos Editore, 1994
  • (in Italian) La mafia che ho conosciuto, Edizioni Espero 1996
  • (in Italian) I complici. Tutti gli uomini di Bernardo Provenzano da Corleone al Parlamento (with Peter Gomez), Rome: Fazi Editore 2007 ISBN 978-88-8112-786-3

References

  1. ↑ (in Italian) Biography on Fazi editore Archived 2008-05-17 at the Wayback Machine
  2. 1 2 Living on the Mafia hit list - a journalist's tale, Reuters, October 23, 2007
  3. 1 2 European Union: Risks faced by journalists, Reporters Without Borders, May 2008
  4. ↑ (in Italian) Lirio Abbate minacciato dalla mafia Archived 2008-05-16 at the Wayback Machine, La Stampa, September 6, 2007
  5. ↑ (in Italian) Vita sotto assedio di un cronista a Palermo, La Repubblica, September 5, 2007
  6. ↑ L' UOMO NERO - storia di Massimo Carminati di Lirio Abbate e Guy Chiappaventi, retrieved 2023-11-06
  7. ↑ ""Barrio Milano", su Sky la guerra tra bande di strada latinoamericane in Italia". La Stampa (in Italian). 2018-09-15. Retrieved 2023-11-06.
  8. ↑ TG24, Sky (2018-11-25). "Il Racconto del Reale: Barrio Milano, viaggio al centro delle gang". tg24.sky.it (in Italian). Retrieved 2023-11-06.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  9. ↑ "Lirio Abbate nominato Ufficiale da Napolitano - l'Espresso". 2019-04-10. Archived from the original on 2019-04-10. Retrieved 2023-11-03.
  10. ↑ "RegeniLeaks: giornalisti e hacker insieme in nome dell'interesse pubblico". Festival Internazionale del Giornalismo (in Italian). Retrieved 2023-11-02.
  11. ↑ "L'Espresso - News, inchieste e approfondimenti". lespresso.it (in Italian). Retrieved 2023-11-02.
  12. ↑ "Il Vaticano va avanti sulla scomunica ai mafiosi e ai corrotti". HuffPost Italia (in Italian). 2017-08-01. Retrieved 2023-11-02.
  13. ↑ "L'Espresso, Alessandro Gilioli e Lirio Abbate nominati vicedirettori - Il Fatto Quotidiano". 2022-04-25. Archived from the original on 2022-04-25. Retrieved 2023-10-29.
  14. ↑ "Lirio Abbate è il nuovo direttore de L'Espresso - Primaonline". 2022-05-23. Archived from the original on 2022-05-23. Retrieved 2023-10-29.
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