ITALY: Italy's Prime Minister, Mr Silvio Berlusconi, who is under investigation on charges of corruption, has launched a broadside against the country's magistrates calling them mentally disturbed sub-humans.
In an interview with Britain's right-leaning Spectator magazine, due to be published today, Mr Berlusconi railed against Italy's investigators, saying they were not even comparable to the rest of the human race.
"To do that job you need to be mentally disturbed, you need psychic disturbances," Mr Berlusconi said in the interview.
"If they do that job it is because they are anthropologically different from the rest of the human race." Mr Berlusconi, a billionaire media mogul who turned to politics a decade ago, is under investigation on charges of bribing judges in a 1980s takeover battle. He denies the charges.
In June, parliament passed a law granting legal immunity to Italy's top five officials, freezing all court cases against the prime minister, although investigations can continue.
In recent months, the conservative prime minister has waged an increasingly public campaign against magistrates and judges, who he says are part of a left-wing witch-hunt against him and his business associates.
Asked in the interview about former Prime Minister, Mr Giulio Andreotti, who has been convicted of ordering the Mafia to kill a journalist, Mr Berlusconi said judges had invented ties between Mr Andreotti and the Mafia to discredit the political right.
"It is not true. It is madness. These judges are mad twice over.
"First, because they are politically that way, and second, because they are mad anyway," he said.
Mr Berlusconi's latest salvo was received with outrage by magistrates, judges and the political opposition, while his spokesman quickly issued a statement trying to calm the storm.
"[It was] a little summertime chat with a friend from Britain's Conservative Party," the spokesman said yesterday, referring to the Spectator's editor, Boris Johnson, who is also a Conservative MP.
"The difference in language and a clear degree of journalistic colouring turned an intricate joke, with reference to particular people, into a general consideration about an entire category.
"That is something it wasn't meant to be," the spokesman added.
However, the clarification was not enough for many in the legal profession, who demanded an explanation from Mr Berlusconi.
"I am completely aghast at these off-the-wall statements," said Mr Salvatore Scaduti, the president of Palermo's Court of Appeals which tried Mr Andreotti.
"As well as constituting a serious threat to the principle of the separation of powers and the freedom of the judiciary, these comments also descend into vulgarity."
A gallery of opposition politicians condemned the comments, calling them outrageous and unacceptable, and they urged Mr Berlusconi to refute them if he could.