As Italy yesterday digested the shock of the conviction for murder of its most representative post-war politician, one of the least perturbed Italians appeared to be the man himself, Giulio Andreotti, who retained his legendary sang froid and joked that he might pen a thriller to fill in the missing clues.
”When I was a student I thought about becoming a magistrate,” the former prime minister said in a television interview. ”All things considered, I thank God that I did something else, because I have seen that it’s a profession that can lead you to make the most incredible blunders.”
Andreotti, seven times prime minister and a friend of cardinals and popes, was sentenced on Sunday to 24 years’ imprisonment for ordering the murder 23 years ago of a journalist, Mino Pecorelli.
Andreotti is appealing.
His conviction was based on evidence from the mafia informer Tommaso Buscetta, who said he had been told the murder was carried out by cosa nostra as a favour to Andreotti.
Surprise and indignation were yesterday expressed by leaders from across the political spectrum and in particular by colleagues who shared Andreotti’s experience in the once dominant Christian Democratic party.
Among those most enraged was Silvio Berlusconi, the prime minister, who is himself currently on trial for corruption in Milan.
As a former member of the P2 masonic lodge and a close friend of the disgraced Socialist prime minister Bettino Craxi, Berlusconi is perhaps the most direct heir of the system of political influence that supported Andreotti in Italy’s now discredited
”first republic”.
The Perugia appeal court’s renewed faith in the reliability of mafia supergrasses could bode ill for Berlusconi, who along with some colleagues faces damaging allegations from similar sources to those that proved the undoing of Andreotti. – Guardian Unlimited (c) Guardian Newspapers Limited 2001