(ANSA) - Palermo, July 22 - A Palermo appeals court on Monday
upheld a first-instance acquittal of former four-time Christian
Democrat minister Calogero Mannino on charges of threatening a
State political body in the State-Mafia talks case.
Prosecutors had asked for a jail term of nine years for the
former merchant navy, far, transport and Mezzogiorno minister,
79.
The charges related to a trial into alleged negotiations
between the State and the Mafia in the early 1990s to stop a
campaign of bombing which had claimed the lives of anti-Mafia
prosecutors Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellio in May and July
1992.
The campaign continued with attacks on artistic and religious
sites in 1993.
From May to August 1993, five car bomb attacks in Rome,
Florence and Milan left 10 people dead and dozens wounded.
In addition to the Uffizi, the targets were two venerable
Roman churches, San Giovanni in Laterano and San Giorgio in
Velabro, and a modern-art gallery in Milan.
A powerful bomb also exploded near the home of a television
talk-show host, Maurizio Costanzo, a vocal Mafia opponent.
Costanzo escaped unharmed.
Mannino cleared again in State-Mafia
Prosecutors had asked 9 yrs