Suspicious death of Italian MEP's husband raises questions of foul play

Suspicious death of Italian MEP's husband raises questions of foul play

Andrea Barolini

Italian MEP Francesca Donato claims her husband was killed as authorities investigate the death of Angelo Onorato, found in his car by his wife and daughter on Saturday.

An Italian MEP claims her husband was murdered as authorities continue to investigate the death of Angelo Onorato, an architect whose body was found on the side of a road on the outskirts of Palermo on Saturday.

After Francesca Donato couldn't reach her partner, she located Onorato's Land Rover near the highway connecting Palermo and Mazara del Vallo using his iPhone's GPS.

A passer-by alerted the police after hearing the screams of Donato and her daughter Carolina, who found the body inside the vehicle.

While an initial police report says there were no signs of struggle, Donato — a former Lega politician turned Christian Democrat — claims that Onorato was, in fact, killed. Their daughter Carolina echoed Donato's words, saying, "no one dare say or even think that my father committed suicide," in a social media post. "They killed him."

"He was not a person who would have ever left his family like this, and above all, as I personally found him together with my mother, I can tell you that it was not a suicide but a murder," she said. 

The family's lawyer, Vincenzo Lo Re, said in a statement he was "convinced that the Palermo Prosecutor's Office will reach (the same) conclusion".

Italian media reported that the far-right populist MEP discovered a letter in the car stating that if anything happened to Onorato, 56, his "lawyer knows everything." Donato has handed the note over to the police as evidence.

Deputy Prosecutor Ennio Patrigni, in charge of the investigation, ordered an autopsy, which is expected to be carried out on Monday.

Donato has been an MEP since 2019 after running for the far-right Lega party in Palermo. Her first shot at the European Parliament in 2014, also as a candidate of populist Matteo Salvini's party, failed after she obtained about 6,000 votes. 

In the past, she campaigned under the banner of "Euroexit", which called for Italy to drop the euro and leave the eurozone. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Donato became a vocal anti-vaxxer, criticising the government's green pass policies. 

Donato caused a scandal in 2021 when she compared the slogan "the vaccine makes you free" with Arbeit macht frei, an infamous Nazi slogan seen above the entrance to the Auschwitz concentration camp, translated as "Work sets you free". The Auschwitz Memorial Museum slammed her comments, asking Donato not to exploit political facts for political goals.

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