ROME, Dec. 1 (UPI) -- Italian dictator Mussolini's grand-daughter, Alessandra Mussolini, Monday formed her own right wing political party.
The member of the Italian Chamber of Deputies said she was launching the Freedom of Action party after angrily quitting the neo-fascist National Alliance to protest its leader's public condemnation of Italy's Fascist regime from 1929 to 1946.
National Alliance leader Gianfranco Fini, who is Italy's deputy prime minister, said while visiting Israel he had "changed his mind" about Mussolini, his erstwhile political hero. He denounced the former dictator's government, particularly its 1938 "race laws" led to the arrest of thousands of Italian Jews.
The row in Fini's party is a problem for conservative Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi because the National Alliance is one of the components of his coalition.
But Alessandra Mussolini, the daughter of the dictator's youngest son, Romano, and a niece of Sophia Loren, said Fini's remarks insulted her name, and betrayed the party.
Her Freedom of Action movement would honor the memory of Mussolini, of whom she once said: "My grand-father is the greatest of them all. I will continue to believe this all my life."
