Umberto Bossi, populist Northern League leader arrives for a press conference in Milan on March 29, 2010. GIUSEPPE CACACE / AFP
Italian populist politician Umberto Bossi, a firebrand who founded the anti-immigrant Northern League party and pushed for the wealthy north's independence, died Thursday, March 19, aged 84.
Tributes poured in from Italy's right-wing bigwigs for senator Bossi, a friend of the late Silvio Berlusconi who managed to transform his small, regionalist party into an influential player in government, before running afoul of health woes and a corruption scandal.
Italy's far-right Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said that "Bossi, with his political passion, marked an important phase in Italian history and made a fundamental contribution" to the Italian center-right.
He was "a passionate political leader and a sincere democrat," President Sergio Mattarella said in a statement.
