Iran objects to Rome naming street after 1999 student protests
Published: Monday, June 30, 2008
23:58GMT—7:58PM/EST
IRAN – ITALY – SOCIETY
Washington, 29 June (IranVNC)—In an apparent challenge to an Italian proposal to re-name a street in Rome after an Iranian student protest movement, officials from Tehran’s City Council have threatened to re-name a street after a Christian convert to Shiite Islam, “Martyr” Edoardo [Mahdi] Agnelli.
Edoardo Agnelli was the son of Italian senator Giovanni Agnelli, owner of Italian carmaker Fiat. The son of a Christian father and Jewish mother, Edoardo Agnelli reportedly converted to Shiite Islam after studying Eastern Philosophy at Princeton University.
Agnelli died in controversial circumstances in November 2000. He was found under a riverbed below a motorway viaduct in northwest Italy. Italian investigators said he died by committing suicide, and the bridge his car was found on is referred to by locals as the “bridge of suicides”.
But some Iranian media claimed at the time that Agnelli was murdered because of his conversion to Islam. Iranian media have adorned him the with title martyr, which is usually conferred on those who died in battle during the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war.
Earlier this month, Gianni Alemanno, the mayor of Rome, expressed support for a proposal to re-name a street where Iran’s embassy in Rome is located “18 Tir” [9th July], after the wide-scale student protests in Iran on 18 Tir 1378 [9 July 1999]. The proposal is yet to be approved by Rome’s City Council.
Sources: E’temad Melli Newspaper, CNN
© IranVNC 2008. All rights reserved.
(Original article written in Persian.)