Justice Minister Carlo Nordio's Chief of Staff Giusy Bartolozzi is set to face charges from the Rome prosecutor's office for allegedly lying in relation to Italy's release last year of a Libyan general wanted for war crimes, she said Thursday.
Bartolozzi said she had been notified that the prosecutors had completed their probe into her, normally the prelude to charges being laid.
She said she was "serene and will go forward" while Nordio said he was "perplexed by the timing" of the prosecutors' move, coming as it does in the midst of a campaign for net month's referendum on judicial reform.
The case regards Njeem Osama Almasri, who was arrested on an International Criminal Court (ICC) warrant at a hotel in Turin at dawn on January 19 and was returned to Tripoli on a State flight following his release on a technicality by a Rome appeals court on January 21.
Almasri, the head of Libya's judicial police, is accused of torture, rape and murder in relation to his management of a detention centre in Tripoli.
