Rome: An Italian judge has ruled that a mafia boss serving a life sentence for murder should be allowed to father a baby through artificial insemination and the public health service should pay for it.
In a case that is certain to stir controversy, the judge accepted the request by Salvino Madonia, who was convicted for the high-profile 1991 murder of a businessman who had refused to pay an extortion fee to the mafia.
Fifty-year old Madonia is detained in a high-security prison and is not allowed to meet his family, including his 32-year old wife Mariangela, in private.
“The judge decided to overcome this problem and guarantee his right to fatherhood," Madonia's lawyer Giovanni Anania was quoted as saying in Corriere della Sera daily.
Madonia will not be allowed to leave the prison for the procedure, meaning that an official from the local health service would have to go to collect his semen in jail.
It is not the first time an Italian judge has allowed Mafia detainees to have babies through artificial insemination but Madonia's case has still raised eyebrows in Roman Catholic Italy, which has one of the strictest laws on fertility treatments.
Corriere said prison officials at the justice ministry were opposed to the idea and that Justice Minister Clemente Mastella would likely have to rule on the case.
Madonia, who comes from a family of renowned mafia bosses, got married in jail in 1992.
Investigators were baffled when the couple's first child was born in 2000, while Madonia was already in detention and was theoretically barred from having any private encounter with his wife.
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