Andreotti acquitted of murder
01 November 2003
On 30 October 2003, Italy's highest appeal court, the Court of Cassation, acquitted former prime minister Giulio Andreotti and Mafia boss Gaetano Badalamenti of the murder of journalist Mino Pecorelli (see Statewatch vol 12 no 6). An appeal court in Perugia had passed 24-year sentences on the two defendants, after they had been acquitted in the first trial, held in the same city. The appeal court was deemed to have passed a guilty verdict in the absence of evidence that Andreotti had an interest in the journalist's murder, and that he had ordered the murder. Thus, the Court of Cassation argued that the original acquittal should have been confirmed by the appeal court. The prosecution was held to have "acted legitimately" by bringing charges against Andreotti, but the presentation of the latter's motive for ordering the murder was abstract (to prevent Pecorelli from publishing damaging information, such as former prime minister Aldo Moro's memoirs during his kidnapping and murder by the Red Brigades) and unsubstantiated, due to the fact that the documents in question were never found.
Secondly, the Court of Cassation also felt that the testimony given by Tommaso Buscetta, who claimed that Andreotti had ordered the murder, "is not supported by any probatory element with regards to the identification of the time, the form, the means and the passive subjects (intermediaries, lower level instigators or the material perpetrators)" of Andreotti having given the order to kill Pecorelli. Buscetta, who is now deceased, was the first high profile Mafia "supergrass", and cooperated closely with anti-Mafia judge Giovanni Falcone (killed by the Mafia in 1991), who sought to investigate the links between the Mafia and political figures. Buscetta's testimony was also considered unreliable in trials that were held in Palermo in which Andreotti was accused and acquitted of "external participation in the Mafia". In spite of the acquittals and subsequent criticism of investigating magistrates, among others by Berlusconi, the court in Palermo noted that there were anomalous and worrying relations between Italy's leading politician, who was prime minister on seven occasions, and important figures who were part of the criminal organisation, including politicians Salvo Lima and Vito Ciancimino and the brothers Nino and Ignazio Salvo.
Misteri d’Italia newsletter, n.80, 6 December 2003, www.misteriditalia.it