A court in Milan on Saturday adjourned for a month the trial of Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi accused of corrupting his former tax lawyer, as the leader pursued efforts to get the judges off his back.
Berlusconi, who did not attend the hearing, is on trial for allegedly paying US$600,000 to British tax lawyer David Mills in exchange for false testimony during two trials in the mid-1990s.
Mills’ parallel trial for the same crime was thrown out by Italy’s appeals court on Thursday because the statute of limitations had expired, even though judges decided the crime had taken place.
Italian law sets a 10-year limit for prosecution of judiciary corruption crimes and terms for Berlusconi’s trial are set to expire early next year.
Berlusconi’s lawyers on Saturday asked the court to suspend the trial until details on the Mills ruling were published, but judges refused because “the trial cannot be suspended for an undetermined amount of time.”
The prime minister launched a fresh attack on the country’s judges on Friday, likening them to Afghanistan’s Taliban and accusing them of using the judiciary for political purposes.
Citing ongoing reforms to the justice system which critics say are designed to make him harder to prosecute, Berlusconi said: “I don’t think it will please the Taliban in the judiciary.”
The secretary of Italy’s magistrates’ union, Giuseppe Cascini, replied, saying that “this escalations of insults and attacks against Italian magistrates is intolerable.”
Italian President Giorgio Napolitano on Saturday called on the prime minister and the magistrates to tone down the “very serious accusations” which fuel “dangerous tensions” between branches of government.
Tens of thousands of Italians congregated on Saturday in Piazza del Popolo in central Rome to protest against Berlusconi under a banner reading “Enough. The law is the same for everyone.”
Organizers put the turnout at some 200,000.
“We are starved of legality,” said Angelo Bonelli, the head of the Greens party. “Today, the real Taliban is Berlusconi who wants to tie up the hands of the magistrates.”
Berlusconi’s battles with the law have marked his public life since he burst onto the political scene in the mid-1990s.
The media tycoon has faced charges including corruption, tax fraud, false accounting and illegally financing political parties.
He was initially a co-defendant in the Mills trial, but proceedings against him were suspended after parliament approved a law shielding him from prosecution while in office, shortly after he returned to power in 2008.
However Italy’s Constitutional Court struck down that legislation last year.
Meanwhile new laws are going through parliament that would have the effect of keeping Berlusconi out of the courts.
One would allow the prime minister or any member of his Cabinet to be automatically granted the suspension of legal process for at least 18 months.
Passed by the lower house after a stormy debate, it is to be debated by the senate on March 9.
More legislation would quash any legal action if a final verdict is not handed down within six years of it being launched — which would end a large number of ongoing cases, not just those against Berlusconi.
Since a separate trial against the prime minister restarted in December, he has not appeared in court in the two hearings so far, citing government commitments.
Berlusconi has never been definitively convicted: In some trials he was acquitted, while other cases were dropped because the statute of limitations expired.
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