Italy, its prime minister and the law. Tipping the scales

Date: 01/02/03

A setback for Silvio Berlusconi in court signals more attacks on magistrates

SILVIO BERLUSCONI, Italy's prime minister, is a determined man. Since winning power in May 2001, his right-wing coalition has been single-minded in enacting legislation to help stop the criminal trials that the prime minister and a close friend have been facing. Mr Berlusconi has also loudly accused magistrates of being politically biased against him. This week he said he was the victim of “incredible judicial persecution”.

The cause of his latest grief is a crucial ruling that his supporters naturally claim as further proof of bias. The court, whose reasoning has yet to be published, said that a trial in which the prime minister stands accused of bribing judges should continue in Milan.

Lawyers for Mr Berlusconi and his friend, Cesare Previti, an MP, had asked for two judge-bribing trials to be moved from Milan on the ground that neither politician would have a fair trial there. Messrs Berlusconi and Previti are together accused of bribing judges in one trial; Mr Previti is a defendant in two other judge-bribing cases.

The court's verdict was unexpected because last November the government had rushed an urgent measure through parliament, known as the Cirami Law after its sponsor, Melchiorre Cirami, a Sicilian senator. The law provided new grounds for the prime minister and his friend to seek their trials' transfer. Had the trials been moved, the crimes of which the pair stand accused would probably have become time-barred by statute of limitation, so preventing verdicts from being reached.

The supreme court's decision reduces the chances of that happening. The judge-bribing trials, suspended since last November, will start up again soon. The trial in which Messrs Berlusconi and Previti are co-defendants is now expected to finish this year, perhaps by the summer. Mr Berlusconi said last year that he would not resign if the court in Milan were to find him guilty. The case is almost certain to go all the way to the supreme court, a process that could take another three years. The verdicts in Mr Previti's other two cases are imminent. Last October, the prosecutor asked that, if found guilty, Mr Previti be sentenced to 13 years in jail.

The supreme court's decision is likely to rouse the government to further attacks on the magistracy. Even before the court's ruling, if speeches at the recent opening of the judicial year were a measure of what is in store, acrimony over the justice system was set to worsen. Prosecutors in Palermo declared that the government's attacks on magistrates offered dangerous encouragement to the Mafia. In protest against political intimidation, magistrates in courts across the country carried copies of the constitution to ceremonies that marked the judicial year's start.

Politicians on the government's side had, however, already geared up to assail magistrates involved in investigating and prosecuting political corruption. When parliament reassembled after its Christmas break, it voted to set up a commission into the tangentopoli (bribesville) scandal that broke 11 years ago and still rumbles on. Then, three days after the judicial year began, the justice minister said that disciplinary action would be initiated against “politicised” magistrates. Mr Berlusconi says that justice will be on the agenda for the whole year - and he sets the agenda.

In any event, other trials may keep criminal justice in the news. After being caught last April, a Mafia boss decided to spill the beans and has been testifying in court. Antonino Giuffre had been a top capo (boss) close to Bernardo Provenzano, Sicily's boss of bosses who has been on the run for over 30 years. Mr Giuffre started to co-operate with prosecutors in June. In January, he gave evidence in the trial in Palermo of Marcello Dell'Utri, a senator and co-founder of Mr Berlusconi's Forza Italia party. A close friend of the prime minister, he is being tried for association with the Mafia.

Mr Giuffre says that, in its search for new and reliable political connections in the early 1990s, Cosa Nostra's capi were optimistic that Mr Berlusconi's party would provide the guarantees they wanted. On January 23rd, Mr Giuffre testified in the trial of Gaspare Giudice, another member of parliament for Forza Italia, who is also accused of association with the Mafia and had already been indicted when he stood for election in 2001. The verdicts in these cases will hinge partly on whether the courts find the evidence of pentiti (supposedly repentant Mafiosi) like Mr Giuffre credible. A verdict in Mr Dell'Utri's trial is expected this year.

Italian politicians benefit from a system that gives defendants more guarantees than in most countries. They can turn to two levels of appeal before sentences are definitively handed down. And time may still be on Mr Berlusconi's side. Many Italians are bored by his protracted legal problems. Most Italians view them through the prism of their own politics. By the time a definitive verdict is reached, their boredom and partiality are hardly likely to change. The extraordinary feature of the trials of Mr Berlusconi is that, in most European countries, they would have ousted him from office, for ever or at least pending a verdict. In Italy they have become a normal part of the political scenery.