Former Italian Senator Marcello
Dell'Utri has skipped the country and is heading for Lebanon
after fleeing an arrest warrant on Mafia charges, investigators
said Friday.
Dell'Utri has not yet reached the Middle East country,
well-informed border and airport sources told ANSA.
The former close aide to centre-right leader Silvio
Berlusconi has two diplomatic passports and is ready to move to
another country if he is smoked out of Lebanon, investigators
said.
Dell'Utri was set to discover next Tuesday if he had to
serve jail time for Mafia links.
An appeals court gave him seven years and Italy's highest
appeals court was due to issue a binding ruling on April 15.
Investigators said they had been monitoring the former
Senator's movements for weeks and had vainly tried to serve the
warrant Friday morning, after judges deemed he was a flight
risk.
The warrant was issued on Tuesday, police said.
Like Berlusconi, Dell'Utri claims he is the victim of a
witch hunt by leftist magistrates.
Dell'Utri is appealing to the supreme Court of Cassation
the seven-year sentence imposed in March.
The Palermo court found that Dell'Utri sealed "a pact of
protection" with Cosa Nostra for Berlusconi at a meeting in May
1974 - a meeting that the court said "formed the genesis of the
relationship that linked the businessman (Berlusconi) and the
Mafia with Dell'Utri's mediation".
Berlusconi employed a Mafia boss and killer recommended by
Dell'Utri, the late Vittorio Mangano, as an alleged stable
manager in the mid 1970s - but in reality to protect his
children from the kind of kidnappings that were then rampant in
Italy.
Dell'Utri is the former head of the media magnate's
advertising arm who is credited with creating the three-time
premier's centre-right party, Forza Italia, in 1993, six months
before it swept to victory in general elections.
Dell'Utri's lawyers have sought to undermine the
credibility of the various ex-Cosa Nostra informants the
prosecution's case was built on.
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