Mayor gets 13-year jail term for migrant integration
ROME,SEPT30(REUTERS)- A former Italian mayor who won worldwide plaudits for his innovative approach in integrating migrants was sentenced to 13 years and two months of jail on Thursday for irregularities in managing the asylum seekers in his town, his lawyers said.
Domenico Lucano, 63, was mayor of Riace, a medieval hilltop village of around 1,900 residents in Italy’s southern Calabria region, from 2004 to 2018. He was listed by Fortune magazine as one of the world’s top 50 leaders in 2016.
“I have spent my life against mafia clans, I have sided with the last ones, the refugees who arrived ... today it all ends for me,” Lucano told reporters outside the tribunal in the Calabrian city of Locri.
It was not immediately clear which crimes he was convicted for.