Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi took his personal legal problems to the G8 meeting in France on Thursday, telling US President Barack Obama Italy was under the yoke of a virtual dicatorship of left-wing judges.
The Italian prime minister is facing four concurrent trials, three for fraud or corruption and the sensational “Rubygate” case, where he is charged with paying for sex with an underage Moroccan prostitute and then using his position to cover it up.
“We have presented a justice reform that is fundamental to us, in Italy we have almost a dictatorship of leftist judges,” Berlusconi told a surprised-looking Obama during a pause in the G8 before a discussion of nuclear issues.
Photo: EPA
Obama got up from his seat and listened to Berlusconi’s comments without making any reply.
In Italy, Berlusconi constantly attacks Italy’s judges and prosecutors, whom he accuses of persecuting him.
However, opposition leaders and the national magistrates association (ANM) were outraged that he should do so on an international stage.
“It’s very serious that this has happened abroad and that a fundamental state institution should be denigrated even before one of the most powerful heads of state in the world,” ANM president Luca Palamara said.
Former Nicaraguan president Violeta Chamorro, who brought peace to Nicaragua after years of war and was the first woman elected president in the Americas, died on Saturday at the age of 95, her family said. Chamorro, who ruled the poor Central American country from 1990 to 1997, “died in peace, surrounded by the affection and love of her children,” said a statement issued by her four children. As president, Chamorro ended a civil war that had raged for much of the 1980s as US-backed rebels known as the “Contras” fought the leftist Sandinista government. That conflict made Nicaragua one of
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