Roberto Vannacci, 55, had already been ousted last year from the management of the Military Geographical Institute, and moved to an essentially administrative role as chief of staff of the operational land forces command.

He has now been suspended from that position for 11 months, with the resulting "halving of his salary", his lawyer Giorgio Carta said.

The announcement comes as Vannacci is mulling standing for European Parliament elections in June under the banner of the far-right League party of Italy's deputy prime minister, Matteo Salvini.

Salvini has defended the general, who served in Afghanistan and Iraq, saying the investigations and actions against him were "ridiculous".

"How scared are they of the general? Long live freedom of thought and speech, long live the armed forces and the police," he wrote on X on Wednesday.

The defence ministry accuses Vannacci of "a lack of a sense of responsibility" and of neutrality, "compromising the prestige and the reputation of the administration to which he belongs", his lawyer told AFP.

He said Vannacci would contest the sanction in an administrative court, arguing for "the right to free expression guaranteed to all citizens, including the military".

Vannacci's book released in August, "The World Backwards", contained passages in which he denounced the "dictatorship of minorities".

He wrote that gay people were not "normal", while also saying of a well-known Italian black volleyball player, Paola Egonu, that while she had Italian citizenship, "her features do not represent Italian-ness."

He was criticised by those on the left and the right, including those surrounding Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, leader of the post-Fascist Brothers of Italy party.

Vannacci is the subject of three separate investigations, including one for allegedly inciting racial hatred and another for defamation against the athlete Egonu.

A third investigation is unrelated to his book, relating to alleged financial irregularities during his posting as military attache to the Italian embassy in Moscow in 2021-22.

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