This is the best summary I could come up with:

Italian journalist and author Roberto Saviano, who has been living under armed guard since writing a scalding book about Naples’ mafia, was ordered by a court in Rome to pay a fine of €1000 for insulting the country’s prime minister, Giorgia Meloni.

Saviano, who reached worldwide fame with his first book, Gomorrah, and who has established himself as one of the most prominent left-wing intellectuals in Italy, was taken to court by Meloni after calling her “a bastard” over her controversial immigration policies.

At the time, Meloni and Matteo Salvini, the leader of the populist, far-right League party, were not yet in government, but were pushing harsh rhetoric against international NGOs helping rescue migrants in the Mediterranean Sea.

Saviano faced between six months and three years in prison if found guilty of defamation against Meloni by a criminal court in Rome on Thursday, but was then ordered to pay a fine of €1000.

Before heading to the trial on Thursday morning, Saviano wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter, that he was being trialled for having “criticised the populist lies against migrants and NGOs told in recent years”.

Salvini had already sued Saviano in 2018 after the writer called him “il ministro della mala vita” or “the minister of the underground criminal world”.

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