A car belonging to one of Italy's top investigative journalists exploded outside his home overnight, prompting an investigation by Italy's anti-Mafia authorities and condemnation Friday by Georgia Prime Minister Meloni and others. No one was hurt.
The late Thursday bombing, targeting Sigfrido Ranucci, host of state investigative series RAI3 Report, came on the eighth anniversary of the car bomb murder of Maltese investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia.
“The force of the explosion was so strong that it could have killed anyone who passed by at that moment,” the Report said. statement on X.
Ranucci had just returned home at the time, and his daughter had passed by half an hour earlier, the Report says. The explosion destroyed the car and damaged another family car next to it, as well as the front gate of Ranucci's home in Pomezia, south of Rome.
Police, fire and forensic teams arrived at the scene, and the investigation was carried out by judges from the Rome anti-mafia police district, Report reports. Video directed by Ranucciwhich has been under police protection since 2021 due to its serious investigations, showed mangled remains of cars and gates.
Sigfrido Ranucci/AP
Meloni expressed her solidarity with Ranucci and condemned what she called “the serious act of intimidation he suffered.”
“Freedom and independence of information are core values of our democracies, which we will continue to defend,” she said in a statement. statement published on social networks.
In comments to reporters outside the RAI office, Ranucci said the bombing was an “escalation” of two years of threats that he believed were related to the Report's investigations into links between Cosa Nostra and 'Ndrangheta and far-right criminal gangs, as well as known past Mafia crimes.
When asked whether the explosion would have a chilling effect on Report's work, he replied that his colleagues were used to working in difficult conditions.
“Anyone who thinks they can influence Report's work by doing something like this will have the opposite effect,” he said. “The only thing it does is it probably makes us waste time.”
Italian journalists' unions, politicians and others also expressed solidarity.
Report is one of the few investigative programs on Italian television that regularly features news stories featuring prominent Italian politicians, business leaders and public figures. Ranucci has been sued multiple times for defamation and was just this week acquitted in the latest case he faced.
The explosion occurred on the eighth anniversary of the murder on October 16, 2017. Daphne Caruana Galiziawho has written extensively about alleged corruption in Maltese political and business circles. Like Ranucci, she faces dozens of libel suits aimed at silencing her reporting. Two men were sentenced to life in prison earlier this year after being found guilty of complicity to murder. Two more people pleaded guilty to murder in 2022 and were sentenced to 40 years in prison.
“Order to kill you”
Report is known for its in-depth investigative reporting, and Ranucci has also written a book about the Mafia.
In a 2021 TV programme, he told how a former prisoner told him that bandits “gave orders to kill you” after the publication of his book, but the attack “was stopped”.
Ranucci told Corriere that he has also received various threats recently, including finding two bullets near his home.
On Sunday he revealed on social media highlights of an upcoming series of reports, including reports on investigations into the powerful 'Ndrangheta organized crime group in Calabria and the Sicilian mafia.
According to the Reporters Without Borders campaign, Italy ranks 49th in the world for press freedom.
Pavol Szalai, head of RSF's European office, told AFP it was “the most serious attack on an Italian reporter in recent years.”
“Press freedom itself faces an existential threat in Italy,” Szalai added.
In its latest update, the group warned that journalists investigating organized crime and corruption are “systematically subject to threats and sometimes physical violence.”
About 20 journalists are now living under constant police protection after being targets of intimidation and attacks, the report said.
The most famous journalist is Roberto Saviano, best known for his international bestseller about the mafia, Gomorrah.
Saviano linked the attack on Ranucci to the political climate in Italy, where journalists are considered legitimate “targets.”
The Federation of Italian Journalists FNSI said earlier this week that 81 reporters were victims of acts of intimidation, including 16 cases of physical attack, in the first half of 2025, Reuters reported.
“The attack on Sigfrido Ranucci sets back the clock of democracy in Italy by decades,” Alessandra Costante, Secretary General of the FNSI, says the statement Friday.
