NOT FOR the first time, Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi found himself in stormy judicial waters yesterday after a Mafia turncoat accused him of Mafia collusion.
Convicted hitman Gaspare Spatuzza was giving evidence in Turin in the appeals trial of long-time Berlusconi aide, senator Marcello Dell’Utri, who in December 2004 was given a nine-year sentence for “Mafia association”.
Given that the potentially controversial nature of Spatuzza’s testimony had prompted concerns about his safety, prosecutors had requested that yesterday’s hearing be held in Turin, far from the Sicilian capital Palermo.
For weeks now, Italian media sources have been speculating that Spatuzza’s testimony could prove highly embarrassing for the prime minister, since the turncoat, in interrogations by magistrates, has gone on record to accuse Mr Berlusconi and Dell’Utri not only of Mafia collusion, but also of links to a 1993-94 Mafia bombing campaign in Rome, Milan and Florence in which 10 people died.
Speaking from behind a hospital-type screen and guarded by 10 policemen, 45-year-old Spatuzza yesterday recounted a 1994 meeting in a bar on Rome’s fashionable Via Veneto with another Sicilian Mafia godfather, Giuseppe Graviano, later convicted for his role in the Rome, Milan and Florence bombings. Spatuzza claimed Graviano had boasted of his connection to Mr Berlusconi, then at the start of his political career.
“Two names were mentioned, one of them was Berlusconi’s and the other that of a fellow country- man [Sicilian], Dell’Utri,” Spatuzza told the court, adding: “I asked if he [Berlusconi] was the one from Channel Five and he told me ‘Yes’. Graviano also told me that thanks to the seriousness of these people, we had the country in our hands.”
Inevitably, there were contrasting reactions to yesterday’s proceedings. Italian media sources claimed that, during a cabinet meeting yesterday morning, Mr Berlusconi had told his ministers the allegations against him were completely “mad”, pointing out that no government had done as much as his governments in the fight against organised crime.
Senior government spokesman Paolo Bonaiuti told reporters: “It is completely logical that the Mafia would use its members to make statements against the prime minister of a government that has acted in a determined and concrete way against organised crime.”
Not everyone was so quick to dismiss the testimony. Former Palermo investigating magistrate, Giuseppe Ayala, who worked for years alongside Mafia investigators Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino (both assassinated by the Mafia in 1992), said: “These are shocking statements, which should not leave us indifferent.”
Pierluigi Bersani, leader of the main opposition Democratic Party, said it was “up to the judges” to assess Spatuzza’s testimony. However, another former investigating magistrate, Euro MP Luigi de Magistris, said: “The Berlusconi government, rather than combating organised crime, has favoured it with a whole series of legislative measures.”