ROME – Silvio Berlusconi, former prime minister of Italy and current leader of the Forza Italia party, is under investigation on suspicion of collaborating with the Mafia to organise murders and bomb attacks, judicial sources said.

 Berlusconi’s indictments from the prosecutor’s office of Florence comprise 23 counts of collaboration with the Mafia in violent crimes, including charges of having ordered a mafia car bomb attack on the journalist Maurizio Costanzo, and attempting to murder Mafia supergrass Salvatore (“Totuccio”) Contorno. 

 Berlusconi has been on the Florence prosecutor’s office list for investigation for the 1993 attacks since October 2017, reports Il Fatto Quotidiano.

 The new investigations have been given focus by evidence obtained by prosecutors in Palermo from imprisoned Mafia boss Giuseppe Graviano.  This has been enough for judges to sentence Marcello Dell’Utri, Berlusconi’s former right-hand man, to twelve years in prison as a threat to the state.

 It has been confirmed that the Florence prosecutors are continuing their investigations, and this is the first time that Berlusconi has been accused of the entire attack strategy of 1993 and 1994, says Il Fatto Quotidiano.

 Among the charges is involvement in the failed attempt to kill Costanzo in Rome in May 1992 with a car bomb and in a group of further bombings including that of May 27 1993, which killed five people including two babies near the Uffizi in Florence. 

 For the first time, he has also come under suspicion of being involved in the failed murder attempt of supergrass Contorno in 1994 – by which time Berlusconi had already become prime minister of Italy.

 The Palermo court of appeal and Dell’Utri’s lawyers want to hear from Berlusconi in court, which raises the problem of whether he should appear as a witness or as a suspect for a connected crime if he is also under investigation in Florence.

 The Sicilian judges will decide the issue on Oct. 3 once they have viewed documents from Berlusconi’s lawyers, Franco Coppi and Niccolo Ghedini, although Il Messaggero reports that Berlusconi will not be in attendance in court that day.

 im