Italian MEP Francesca Donato, who spoke out against COVID-19 vaccines and lockdowns, found her husband dead inside his car by the roadside with a strap around his neck.
Donato claims her husband, architect Angelo Onorato, was murdered as her warning shot to silence her over outspoken views.
Donato located her Landrover near the highway connecting Palermo and Mazara del Vallo using his iPhone’s GPS before finding his dead body in the vehicle.
The former Lega politician claims her husband was murdered, with her daughter Carolina echoing her claims, saying, “No one dares say or even think that my father committed suicide,” in a social media post. “They killed him.”
Tragedy strikes Francesca Donato MEP who found her husband strangled in his car.
— Kat A 🌸 (@SaiKate108) May 27, 2024
Only weeks after she had warned about the dangerous geopolitical situation following the attack on Slovakian PM Robert Fico.
She has been one of the few European politicians to take a stand against… pic.twitter.com/mwnEGu5akM
Here are some of Donato’s tweets from 2023:
And 2022:
Italian MEP Francesca Donato calls for an investigative team to see who really is perpetrating against citizens and not just take the Ukrainians word… pic.twitter.com/sHpGePyxea
— Pelham (@Resist_05) April 7, 2022
“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.
Vincenzo Lo Re, the family’s lawyer, said he was “convinced that the Palermo Prosecutor’s Office will reach (the same) conclusion.”
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EuroNews reported: 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.
The CCTV footage from the street has been deemed unusable as the Land Rover was parked beyond its range, and the analysis of the footage showed no other vehicles or individuals approaching the parked vehicle.
However, the authorities could not establish whether someone else was in the car with Onorato or whether the person could have left the scene without being seen by surveillance cameras.
Who is Francesca Donato?
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.
She has also spread various conspiracy theories on COVID-19 and vaccines, such as accusing drug maker Pfizer of producing products “extremely harmful to health” and claiming that the death of Leonardo Ditta, an Italian doctor, was linked to his COVID vaccination. She was forced to apologize to Ditta’s family following the fallout over her words.
After leaving Lega in 2021, she became an independent MEP, also departing from the Identity and Democracy (ID) parliamentary group.
She has since run for the mayor of Palermo but was unsuccessful in her bid.
Donato then joined the Christian Democracy of Salvatore Totò Cuffaro, former president of the Sicilian region and Italian MP. Cuffaro had previously been convicted of seven years in prison for aiding and abetting the mafia and disclosing official secrets.
Donato’s husband, Onorato — an architect and entrepreneur — has allegedly requested a gun permit after receiving complaints over a development near Palermo’s Punta Raisi airport.
He was on his way to the site on Saturday to resolve a problem, “hopefully in a friendly way,” Onorato’s family said. Police have taken his mobile phone, computer, and other equipment for further investigation.
The family excluded the possibility of him being under financial duress.
In the meantime, Donato asked everyone to refrain from speculating about the causes of Onorato’s death. “Let’s let the police do their job,” she said in a post on X on Monday.
Donato will not stand for re-election in the upcoming European elections in June.
