ITALIAN PRIME minister Silvio Berlusconi appeared to register a significant success yesterday in his battles with the Italian judiciary when a court in Sicily issued a ruling that effectively dismissed the allegations that Cosa Nostra played a fundamental role in the creation of his Forza Italia party in 1994.
The case in question was an appeals court hearing, featuring Mr Berlusconi’s long-time business associate and political ally, Marcello Dell’Utri, who in 2004 received a nine-year sentence for “mafia association”.
Yesterday’s sentence ruled that Dell’Utri had cultivated close links with organised crime but not after 1992.
In what looks like a very “political” ruling, the court in effect pronounced Dell’Utri guilty of “association” with Cosa Nostra and with former Mafioso godfathers but acquitted him of similar charges in the post-1992 period.
In recent years, different Mafiosi-turned-state-witnesses have testified that, thanks to the efforts of Dell’Utri, Cosa Nostra in 1993 had guaranteed its support for the nascent party. At the 1994 general election, Forza Italia scored a remarkable nationwide success, winning nearly all the single-seat constituencies in Sicily.
While yesterday’s sentence may have been favourable for Mr Berlusconi, it was rather less so for his trusted ally, whose nine-year sentence was just reduced to seven.
Dell’Utri, who was not in court, is expected to appeal yesterday’s sentence in the Court of Cassation, the final appeals court.
Speaking at a press conference yesterday, he expressed his relative satisfaction at the ruling: “This judgement is more or less what I expected. I knew that I wouldn’t be acquitted. This is a sentence worthy of Pontius Pilate: on the one hand it does a favour to the state prosecution whilst on the other it is very satisfying for me because it has ruled out all the theories about the political climate in the wake of the 1992 killings.”
Not everyone in Berlusconi’s Freedom Party (PDL) welcomed yesterday’s ruling, however. Mauro La Manta, leader of the Sicilian branch of Giovane Italia, the PDL’s youth party, called the judgment “very serious” for someone involved in politics and repeated calls for those convicted of mafia crimes to be expelled from the PDL.