Three-time former premier and media
mogul Silvio Berlusconi said Wednesday that if his centre-right
bloc takes power in the September 25 general election it will
pass a reform so that criminal acquittals are no longer
appealable by prosecutors and innocent people can no longer be
"persecuted".
At present there are two levels of appeal in the Italian justice
system, one more than in most countries, and either the defence
or the prosecution can avail themselves of this right.
Berlusconi has for years said he is the victim of judicial
persecution by politically motivated, left-leaning prosecutors.
He has been convicted definitively only once, for tax fraud, in
some 32 criminal cases brought against him, including bribing
judges or Senators, paying for sex with an underage prostitute,
and bribing witnesses to lie about his bunga bunga parties.
Throughout these legal woes, he has usually had to fight up to
the supreme Court of Cassation, because prosecutors appealed
against lower-court acquittals.
Speaking in his daily 'pill' of news on Facebook Wednesday,
Berlusconi said "in Italy thousands of people each year are
arrested and tried while being innocent.
"The trial is already a punishment, which hits the defendant,
but also his family, his friends, his work.
"For this reason it must not drag on ad infinitum, in appeals
and counter-appeals.
"When we govern (Italy), acquittals, first instance or second
instance, will not be appealable.
"A citizen, once they are proven innocent, has the right not to
be persecuted forever".
Berlusconi's centre-right Forza Italia (FI) party is running in
an alliance with Matteo Salvini's nationalist League party and
the hard right Brothers of Italy (FdI) party of Giorgia Meloni,
who is poised to become Italy's first post-fascist and first
woman premier after September 25.
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