Gianni Alemanno

Giovanni "Gianni" Alemanno (born 3 March 1958) is an Italian politician who from April 2008 until June 2013 was mayor of Rome for The People of Freedom. He was the secretary of the National Movement for Sovereignty from 2017 to 2019. Career At an early age Alemanno joined the neo-fascist/post-fascist Italian Social Movement, and although arrested three times he was never convicted. The first arrest took place in Rome on 20 November 1981, when he was accused (along with four others) of intimidating a 23-year-old student, Dario D'Andrea, who was hit on the head by Sergio Mariani, then secretary of the Fronte della Gioventù (the youth organization of the Italian Social Movement). Mariani was sentenced, while Alemanno was acquitted. The second time was in 1982, when Alemanno was accused of throwing a Molotov cocktail at the Soviet Union embassy. According to other sources, his arrest followed a brawl that broke out during a protest against the USSR. Despite being sentenced to eight months in Rebibbia Prison, he was subsequently acquitted. Alemanno became national secretary of the youth organization of the party in 1988. After being elected regional deputy of Lazio in 1990, he was elected for the first time to the Chamber of Deputies in the 1994 general election. In 1995 he joined the newly formed National Alliance party, which succeeded the Italian Social Movement following its repudiation of extremism at the Congress of Fiuggi in the 1994. Together with Francesco Storace, he founded Social Right, a national- and social-conservative faction within National Alliance. Between 2001 and 2006, Alemanno was Minister of Agriculture under Silvio Berlusconi (in Berlusconi's 2nd and 3rd cabinets).