ITALY08.12.2002
   Journalist imprisoned over articles in 1960s.
   Reporters sans frontires today expressed its outrage over the
   imprisonment of former journalist Stefano Surace (photo), 69, for
   supposed press crimes committed more than 30 years ago.
   The case is "doubly scandalous", Reporters Without Borders
   secretary-general Robert Mnard said in a letter to Italian President
   Carlo Azeglio Ciampi. "To sentence journalists to imprisonment for
   press crimes is contrary to UN standards, but it is unworthy of a
   democratic country to jail an elderly man who has not been a journalist
   for years for crimes that should be subject to limitation by lapse of
   time and which would nowadays not even be the subject of prosecution,"
   he said. "We call on you to intervene and pardon Stefano Surace so that
   he can be released", the letter added. "We also call for the removal of
   prison sentences for press crimes from Italian law, as recommended by
   the UN Commission on Human Rights and the UN Special Rapporteur on
   promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and
   expression."
   Surace, who edited the nonconformist publication Le Ore during the
   1960s, has been incarcerated since December 2001 in Opera prison near
   Milan, where he is serving a sentence of two years, six months and 12
   days stemming from convictions for libel and obscenity handed down in
   1963 and 1967. A resident of France for almost 40 years, he was
   arrested when he went to visit a friend in Italy.
   He was known for his investigations into prison life and, while still a
   journalist, had founded an association of former detainees. He had
   ceased to work as a journalist before these convictions and had become
   a ju-jitsu teacher.