Prosecutors in Reggio
Calabria on Tuesday requested an immediate trial, with no
preliminary hearings, for former cabinet minister Claudio
Scajola.
Scajola is under house arrest for allegedly helping Amedeo
Matacena, a fugitive former MP for ex-premier Silvio
Berlusconi's Forza Italia (FI) party who has been convicted of
Mafia links.
The southern city's anti-Mafia investigators also requested
immediate trials for Matacena's wife Chiara Rizzo and his
general factotum, Martino Politi.
Scajola, a 66-year-old former government programme,
interior and industry minister under separate Berlusconi
governments, is accused of trying to help transfer Matacena from
Dubai to Lebanon, from where it is allegedly more difficult to
obtain an extradition.
Rizzo and Politi face identical charges.
The pair are also believed to have tried to conceal
Matacena's assets to prevent them from being seized.
Matacena announced in June that he would return to Italy
from Dubai to serve his time in order to give his children
"their mother back", but so far has not come back.
This is not Scajola's first encounter with the judicial
authorities.
In January a judge acquitted him and his co-defendant,
businessman Diego Anemone, on charges related to a shady
real-estate deal involving an expensive home with a view on
Rome's iconic Colosseum that led to his resignation as industry
minister in Berlusoni's third government in 2010.
The judge cleared Scajola, saying his assertion that
Anemone had paid for most of the flat for him without his
knowledge was credible.
Prosecutors, who had demanded Scajola be given a three-year
prison term, are appealing against the acquittal.
Scajola was also forced to resign as interior minister from
a previous Berlusconi government in July 2002 after sparking
controversy by making derogatory remarks about slain Labor
Ministry aide Marco Biagi.
Biagi was gunned down the previous March by the Red
Brigades after being denied a police escort by Scajola.
In off-the-cuff remarks, Scajola said Biagi had been a
''pain in the a**'' and that had Biagi been given an escort
''three people would have been killed instead of one''.
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