Italian journalist Adriano Cappellari investigated for fabricating arson attack and threats against himself, Meloni and a priest

The accusations

A 30-year-old local reporter is under investigation for staging a May arson attack on his own home and fabricating months of death threats, Vicenza prosecutors said on Wednesday. Adriano Cappellari, who contributes to the weekly L'Altopiano, is formally suspected of arson, slander, simulating a crime, causing public alarm, and defrauding a public body. Carabinieri from Bassano del Grappa searched his house, seizing personal items and electronic devices.

The night of the fire

The incident erupted around 11:28 p.m. on 30 May outside the Cappellari family home in Enego, a small town in the province of Vicenza. Flames damaged a fence, shattered windows and affected neighbouring buildings. Surveillance footage showed a person in a tracksuit with a covered face tossing an envelope over the gate and placing a cardboard bundle containing camping-gas canisters, denatured alcohol containers and fireworks near the entrance. Cappellari himself filmed the final moments of the blaze from the back of the house, according to the prosecutors’ statement, and was recorded returning home at 11:11 p.m. and again at 11:35 p.m.

“The height of the young man is compatible with that of the disguised person filmed by the cameras at the moment the envelope was dropped and the gas cylinder was triggered.”

A trail of purchases and a digital footprint

Carabinieri traced four butane-propane cartridges bought online on 25 April and six bottles of ethyl alcohol ordered on 29 April, delivered on 4 May. All were paid for with a credit card registered to Cappellari and a phone number linked to him, investigators said. RIS forensics specialists estimated the suspect’s height at between 1.69 m and 1.75 m (5'7"–5'9"), which matches Cappellari’s stature. The only deliveries of those specific products to Enego matched purchases made by Cappellari himself, the prosecutor’s office noted.

Months of alleged threats and security measures

Cappellari had reported a series of menacing letters between November 2025 and February 2026. The anonymous mailings contained death threats, photographs of Cappellari, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and anti-mafia priest Don Maurizio Patriciello with their faces circled in red and marked with an 'X'. One envelope held three.22-calibre cartridges. After those reports, authorities first assigned a radio-linked patrol to Cappellari and later provided a dedicated Carabinieri protection detail with an official vehicle and escort personnel.

The investigation pivots

Cappellari initially pointed suspicion at people living in Enego and neighbouring municipalities, and Carabinieri cross-checked one individual against the surveillance footage. But the similarities between the May attack and the earlier threats, combined with the e-commerce trail, shifted the inquiry toward Cappellari himself. Prosecutors say the envelopes, the imagery and the explosive device were all his own work. The Carabinieri search on 29 July is the first formal step against him.

Reactions and next steps

Cappellari has not commented publicly since the search. Earlier, after the 30 May explosion, he told Il Giornale di Vicenza he was “shaken” and that “someone was evidently watching me.” Don Patriciello, speaking to Adnkronos after the fire, said a letter he received in February matched one Cappellari had also received, suggesting “the same hand” was behind both. Meloni’s office had called the attack “an unacceptable assault on press freedom.” Vicenza prosecutors have not yet set a preliminary hearing date.