Cécile Kyenge, an MEP who had bananas thrown at her and was likened to an orangutan during her time as Italy’s integration minister, is being sued for defamation by the far-right interior minister, Matteo Salvini, for calling his party, the League, racist.

Kyenge will face trial in the northern city of Piacenza over comments made in an interview in 2014 during the Festa de l’Unità, a social democratic event celebrated across Italy each year. She was responding to a photograph posted on social media by Fabio Rainieri, who at the time was party secretary in the Emilia-Romagna region, depicting her as an orangutan.

On being notified of the trial on 14 September, Kyenge, who moved to Italy from the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 1983 to study medicine, wrote on Facebook: “Today in Piacenza: Salvini has summoned me to court because I said the League is racist. Judge for yourselves.”(theguardian)…[+]