The International Press Institute (IPI) today condemned the recent prison sentences handed out to three Italian journalists by a court in Milan and strongly urged Italian lawmakers to reform the country’s criminal defamation laws.

Italian journalists Andrea Marcenaro, Giorgio Mulé and Riccardo Arena were each sentenced to prison time by the Court of Milan on defamation charges last week for a 2010 article they published in the weekly news magazine Panorama about Palermo magistrate Francesco Messineo.

Marcenaro and Arena were each sentenced to one year in prison for having written an article that discussed Messineo’s alleged connections to organized crime, Gazzetta del Sud reported. According to online news website Ossigeno Informazione, Mule, editor of Panorama, was sentenced to eight months for “failing to check the article” after Messineo brought charges against the magazine in 2010. Mule was also ordered to pay €20,000 in compensation to Messineo.

“This case concerning the Panorama journalists is further confirmation of the chilling affect that criminal defamation has had on Italian journalists,” IPI Deputy Director Anthony Mills said. “We urge Italian lawmakers to decriminalise the country’s libel laws and ensure that defamation policies are in line with international human rights standards.”

The ruling also prompted a response from Organization for Security and Co-operation (OSCE) Representative on Freedom of the Media Dunja Mijatović. “In a modern democracy no one should be imprisoned for what they write,” she said. “Civil courts are fully competent to redress grievances of people who think their reputations have been damaged.”

The latest convictions follow a number of recent high-profile cases, including a similar defamation case that resulted in a 14-month jail term for Alessandro Sallusti, editorial director of Il Giornale.

Last year, Italy’s highest tribunal upheld a 2011 sentence requiring Sallusti to spend 14 months in prison over the 2007 publication by magazine Libero, which Sallusti edited at the time, of an anonymous comment attacking a judge for granting a 13-year-old the right to have an abortion.

Sallusti’s sentence was later commuted by Italian President Giorgio Napolitano, who said at the time that he wanted to “remedy an evidently delicate situation (and) prompt a reflection to achieve better balanced legislation”. However, no such legislation has yet been passed.

Politicians across Italy condemned the decision upholding Sallusti’s sentence, including a member of Berlusconi’s People of Freedom party, who called it “staggering.” Vannino Chiti, a Democratic Party senator, also said that sentencing a journalist to jail time for defamation was “a mistake that democracy can no longer allow”.

Prior to the Sallusti case, another journalist, Gianluigi Guarino, in 2010 served 43 days in prison for criminal defamation before his pardon and subsequent release stemming from his reported accumulation of more than a dozen un-appealed convictions during his tenure as director of the Corriere di Caserta.

In May 2011, a court in Chieti sentenced three Italian journalists to prison for their reports about an alleged investigation of the mayor of Sulmona by the Financial Crime Investigation Unit (Guardia di Finanza). Walter Nerone and Claudio Lattanzio, who were employed by the Il Centro newspaper, were each sentenced to one year in prison without parole, while Luigi Vicinanza, former editor-in-chief of Il Centro, received an eight-month prison sentence, also without parole. The journalists were additionally ordered to pay €12,000 in damages and cover the costs of the trial, but their sentences reportedly remain under appeal.

Roy Greenslade of The Guardian reported last July on the sentencing of an editor and former director of the newspaper L’Alto Adige, Orfeo Donatini and Tiziano Marson, for their criminal defamation. The two were dealt four-month prison sentences and a fine of €15,000. The sentence stemmed from a news story alleging that Sven Knoll, a provincial councillor in South Tyrol, had participated in a neo-Nazi summit. The councillor reportedly filed a criminal complaint even before requesting a correction.

While only one of the journalists convicted in the above cases has served actual prison time, Italy’s criminal defamation laws continue to pose a threat to investigative journalism, while encouraging self-censorship and protecting public officials from scrutiny.

IPI has previously urged Italian lawmakers to alter criminal defamation policies, but Italy’s parliament has so far rejected proposals to amend such laws. The Panorama rulings, however, emphasize the urgent need for change in one of the EU’s original founding countries.