The Camorra death sentence on Gomorra author Roberto Saviano is a greater threat than an Iranian fatwah, Salman Rushdie said Friday.
''The Mafia poses a much more serious problem than the one I had to face,'' said Rushdie, who was condemned to death by Ayatollah Khomeini in 1989.
''Saviano is in terrible danger, worse than me,'' he said.
The Anglo-Indian novelist, in Paris to promote his latest book The Enchantress of Florence, said he met Saviano in New York in April.
He said the FBI believed Saviano's life to be in danger in America too, given the transatlantic reach of the Italian Mafia.
Rushdie supported Saviano's desire to leave Italy but said he would have to choose a foreign haven carefully.
''Without doubt, he'll have to leave Italy but he must choose his future destination very prudently,'' Rushdie said.
Saviano said this week he wanted to leave Italy after two years in witness protection, to ''get his life back'' and start writing again.
The Italian government has urged the writer to stay in the country as a symbol of the anti-Mafia fight and sources close to the writer say he has not fully made up his mind.
Earlier this week the media reported a Camorra bomb plot to slay the writer by the end of the year but the informant who reportedly gave the tip-off subsequently retracted.
Saviano's 2006 expose' Gomorra, which has been turned into a film bidding for the Oscars, has enraged the Camorra.
Rushdie spent a decade underground because of his 1989 novel The Satanic Verses, deemed sacrilegious by the Iranian theocracy.
Ten years ago Iran said it would not support bids on Rushdie's life but the fatwah has not been officially lifted because only Khomeini, who died four months after issuing it, had that power.
