Italian minister resigns over T-shirt

ROME, Feb. 18 (UPI) -- Roberto Calderoli, the Italian cabinet minister whose T-shirt bearing cartoon images of Mohammed angered Muslims, resigned Saturday.

Calderoli, a member of the anti-immigration Northern League, was minister without portfolio for institutional reform and devolution. His resignation, encouraged by Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, occurred the day after rioters gathered outside the Italian consulate in Benghazi, Libya, in a deadly protest, the BBC reported.

After saying that he would distribute T-shirts with the cartoons that ran in the Danish newspaper Jyllands Posten, Calderoli on television unbuttoned his own shirt to show a cartoon-bearing T-shirt underneath.

Calderoli has referred to Muslims as "Ali Babas" and called for the expulsion of all illegal immigrants caught in Italy. A conservative, he also opposes same-sex marriage and calls for chemical castration of sexual offenders.