Government minister in swastika row

Italy’s new prime minister Giorgia Meloni has been criticised for appointing as a junior minister a man who showed up for his stag night wearing a swastika armband.

Galeazzo Bignami, 47, was made minister for infrastructure by Meloni on Monday.

Bignami’s appointment was condemned by Marco Furfaro, an MP for the centre-left opposition Democratic Party, as “an offence, an indecency against the constitution, history, memory and victims of the swastika”.

A photograph of Bignami grinning while wearing the armband and a black tie, taken in 2005, first surfaced in 2016.

Bignami said he felt “profound shame” over the armband incident, adding: “I have apologised more than once.”