Italy’s constitutional court has opened the way for Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi to be put back on trial, throwing out crucial parts of a law that represented his latest attempt to shield himself from prosecution.
The 12-to-3 ruling complicates the prime minister’s efforts to consolidate his parliamentary majority and shortens the odds on an early election.
Berlusconi faces returning to the dock in three interconnected prosecutions accusing him of fraud, bribery and other offences.
However, according to some interpretations the complex judgement may give the prime minister plenty of scope to delay proceedings. One case concerns his alleged bribery of the UK lawyer David Mills, estranged husband of former British Cabinet minister Tessa Jowell.
The law dealt with by the constitutional court was passed last year. It allowed for trials of cabinet ministers to be suspended on the grounds their official duties prevented them from defending themselves properly.
The court decided that trial judges should decide on a case-by-case basis whether this is a valid excuse.
Giovanni Guzzetta, a law professor at Tor Vergata university in Rome, said: “The evaluation will, in the first instance, be a matter for the judge and, in the second, for the constitutional court if the defendant believes the judge’s evaluation is amiss.”
Donatella Ferranti, who heads the opposition group on the all-party justice committee in the lower house of Italy’s parliament, said: “This is the umpteenth blow to a practice of making laws tailor-made [for Berlusconi] that has characterized this legislature.”
A leading parliamentary representative from Berlusconi’s Freedom People movement, Osvaldo Napoli, said: “Pontius Pilate would have been more daring in giving his judgement.”
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