Beppe Grillo given jail term for slander

Beppe Grillo, leader of Italy's second biggest party, the Five-Star Movement, has been given a one-year jail term for slandering science professor Francesco Battaglia.

Battaglia insists that he had been threatened and his car vandalised after Grillo criticised him for backing nuclear energy.

Grillo, who is preparing to hand over the reins of his party to a younger group of people, also faces damages of €50,000, and he has suggested that people were afraid his party was getting close to government.

He has likened himself to two other historical figures who had spent time in jail, Italian anti-Fascist campaigner Sandro Pertini and South Africa's first black president, Nelson Mandela.

"If Pertini and Mandela ended up in prison, I can go there too for a cause I think is just and that has been supported by the overwhelming majority of Italians," he wrote on his blog.

Battaglia said the eccentric leader should carry out community service, just as ex-Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi had done, that he should take more care of what he said because of the large number of Italians who listened to him.

Grillo also publicly insulted the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia professor at a rally in 2011, after a TV appearance in which Battaglia had supported nuclear energy.

"I'll kick your backside and throw you off TV," he said, urging his supporters to refuse to pay their TV licence fees.

Grillo, was the driving force behind the Eurosceptic, anti-austerity protest party, which is currently second in opinion polls behind Prime Minister Matteo Renzi's centre-left Democratic Party.