, November 30, 1928 – Milan

Milan

Milan is the second-largest city in Italy and the capital city of the region of Lombardy and of the province of Milan. The city proper has a population of about 1.3 million, while its urban area, roughly coinciding with its administrative province and the bordering Province of Monza and Brianza ,...

, May 18, 1988), was a popular TV host and anchorman on national RAI

RAI

RAI — Radiotelevisione italiana S.p.A. known until 1954 as Radio Audizioni Italiane, is the Italian state owned public service broadcaster controlled by the Ministry of Economic Development. Rai is the biggest television company in Italy...

 television, who was falsely accused of being a member of the Camorra

Camorra

The Camorra is a Mafia-type criminal organization, or secret society, originating in the region of Campania and its capital Naples in Italy. It is one of the oldest and largest criminal organizations in Italy, dating to the 18th century.-Background:...

 and drug trafficking. He became an icon of injustice and a reminder of one of the gravest miscarriages of justice of the Italian judiciary system.

Early career

After taking a degree in journalism in Genoa, he worked in theatre with Paolo Villaggio

Paolo Villaggio

Paolo Villaggio is an Italian actor, writer, director and comedian.-Life:Villaggio was born in Genoa in 1932. His jobs included being a clerk for the Italsider steel major which inspired his character "Il ragioniere Fantozzi Ugo", "the accountant Ugo Fantozzi"...

 before joining the RAI – Italy's state radio and television corporation – as a radio announcer. In 1956, he first appeared on television and presented popular programmes such as Domenica Sportiva and Giochi senza frontiere

Jeux Sans Frontieres

Jeux Sans Frontières was a Europe-wide television game show.In its original conception, it was broadcast from 1965 to 1999 under the auspices of the European Broadcasting Union and featured teams from different European countries in outlandish costumes competing to complete bizarre tasks in funny...

. In 1969, he was fired by RAI when he described in an interview, the company's managers as a group of boy scouts trying to pilot a supersonic jet plane unsuccessfully. Subsequently, he worked for several private TV stations and various newspapers, before returning to RAI in 1977.

In 1977, Tortora started to present a groundbreaking transmission called Portobello, which attracted an audience of up to 26 million people every Friday night, far outperforming any other programme. Named after the famous Portobello Road

Portobello Road

Portobello Road is a street in the Notting Hill district of The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea in west London, England. It runs almost the length of Notting Hill from south to north, roughly parallel with Ladbroke Grove. On Saturdays it is home to Portobello Road Market, one of London's...

 market in London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

, the show allowed the audience, via telephone from home, to buy or sell things, present ideas or inventions, or look for a partner or someone they had not seen for years. The challenge for those participating in the studio was to get Portobello, the green parrot and mascot of the show, to say his name. He rarely did.

Arrest and conviction

In June 1983, he was arrested and held in jail for months after trumped up charges by several pentiti

Pentito

Pentito designates people in Italy who, formerly part of criminal or terrorist organizations, following their arrests decide to "repent" and collaborate with the judicial system to help investigations...

 of the Nuova Camorra Organizzata

Nuova Camorra Organizzata

The Nuova Camorra Organizzata was an Italian Camorra criminal organization founded in the late 1970s by a Neapolitan Camorrista, Raffaele Cutolo, in the region of Campania. It was also known by the initials NCO...

, such as Pasquale Barra

Pasquale Barra

Pasquale Barra is a former Italian Camorrista who was a senior member and hitman for the Nuova Camorra Organizzata , a Camorra organization in Naples. Barra has the distinction of being the first NCO member to become a pentito, when he decided to collaborate with Italian Justice in 1982.Barra...

, Giovanni Pandico

Giovanni Pandico

Giovanni Pandico is a former Italian Camorrista who was a member of the Nuova Camorra Organizzata , a Camorra organization in Naples. Pandico rose to become one of Camorra boss, Raffaele Cutolo's underwriters within the organization. After twelve years of imprisonment, he decided to collaborate...

 and Giovanni Melluso

Giovanni Melluso

Giovanni Melluso was an Italian criminal and alleged associate of the Milanese crime boss, Francis Turatello, who later became a significant informant against the Nuova Camorra Organizzata , a Camorra organization in Naples...

, and other people already known for perjury. It was soon noted that this was most likely a wrong identification with a man bearing the same surname (meaning "turtledove"), but the pentiti kept on accusing Tortora of the gravest offences related to cocaine dealing.

He was sentenced to ten years in jail in his first trial held in 1985, being spared further incarceration only thanks to the providential intervention of the Radical Party who offered him a candidacy to the European Parliament

European Parliament

The European Parliament is the directly elected parliamentary institution of the European Union . Together with the Council of the European Union and the Commission, it exercises the legislative function of the EU and it has been described as one of the most powerful legislatures in the world...

, which Tortora won in a landslide as the country divided between those who held him guilty and those who held him innocent.

Rehabilitation

In September 1986, the Court of Appeal of Naples

Naples

Naples is a city in Southern Italy, situated on the country's west coast by the Gulf of Naples. Lying between two notable volcanic regions, Mount Vesuvius and the Phlegraean Fields, it is the capital of the region of Campania and of the province of Naples...

 fully acquitted Tortora. In 1987 the Supreme Court definitively affirmed Tortora's total innocence, and he started an action against those magistrates who had unjustly tried and sentenced him.

After four long years, he returned to his work in TV, to a moving comeback in his popular Portobello show in February 1987. Tortora, a profoundly changed man, simply said "Well then, where did we leave off?" He developed cancer

Cancer

Cancer , known medically as a malignant neoplasm, is a large group of different diseases, all involving unregulated cell growth. In cancer, cells divide and grow uncontrollably, forming malignant tumors, and invade nearby parts of the body. The cancer may also spread to more distant parts of the...

 and died in May 1988, some say because of the emotional stress

Stress (medicine)

Stress is a term in psychology and biology, borrowed from physics and engineering and first used in the biological context in the 1930s, which has in more recent decades become commonly used in popular parlance...

of his imprisonment. He became an icon of injustice and a perpetual reminder of one of the gravest public blunders of the Italian judiciary system.