ROME-Former Senator Marcello Dell’Utri’s decisive trial due Tuesday was expected to be rescheduled following deferment requests from his defense lawyers on the grounds of illness.

o A close associate of the former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi and mastermind of the medi mogul's meteoric political career, Dell’Utri was declared a fugitive ahead of a final verdict in a trial for mafia collusion scheduled for April 15.

  By the decision of a lower court earlier he was pronounced guilty of having liaised between Mr Berlusconi and a Sicilian Mafia boss, for which he could face seven years in prison, should the Italian Court of Cassation uphold the original ruling.

 Having left Italy in mid-March, Dell’Utri was captured by Lebanese police in a hotel in Beirut and is now in police custody, awaiting extradition.