State secrets?

There has been some interest expressed in the fact that Mario Scaramella, who had met the late Alexander Litvinenko in that famous sushi bar in Piccadilly just before the latter was taken ill, has been arrested in Italy - taken off the aeroplane as he returned from London to Naples. He is being accused of arms trafficking and disclosing state secrets.

There is, as it happens, another aspect to this case:

Scaramella has been gathering information for Italian Sen. Paolo Guzzanti - the former chair of a parliamentary commission that examined cases of past KGB infiltration in Italy. Guzzanti said the Italian accusations against Scaramella appeared unrelated to the poisoning.

It seems that the two men had discussed whether Romano Prodi had been a KGB agent and whether there was any evidence for this. Prodi has threatened to sue anyone who defamed his character but this may be a more certain way of silencing people.