guardian.co.uk,
John Hooper in Rome, Tuesday 24 July 2012
Nicola Mancino, pictured during his time as president of Italy's Senate. Photograph: Marco Ravagli/AP |
Prosecutors
in Palermo asked on Tuesday for former Italian interior minister Nicola Mancino
to be tried in connection with alleged negotiations between the state and the
Sicilian mafia in the early 1990s.
Mancino, a
Christian Democrat, was accused of withholding evidence about the talks. The 81
year-old politician said he would prove his innocence "and my loyalty to
the state".
Others
charged included Marcello Dell'Utri, a senator who created the party with which
Silvio Berlusconi launched himself into politics in 1994, and a second former
minister, Calogero Mannino, who still holds a seat in the lower house of
parliament. Both men were alleged to have been intermediaries in the talks,
aimed at ending a campaign of bombings unleashed by the Cosa Nostra in 1992.
Among the
victims were two leading anti-Mafia prosecutors, Giovanni Falcone and Paolo
Borsellino. National monuments in Florence and Rome were also targeted in the
campaign which left 22 people dead.
The
prosecutors also asked for the indictment of three former officers in the
semi-militarised Carabinieri police and five top Cosa Nostra
"godfathers", including two of the mafia's former supreme chiefs,
Bernardo Provenzano and Salvatore 'Toto' Riina.
Earlier
this month, Mancino was at the centre of a clash between the Palermo
prosecutors and the current president, Giorgio Napolitano, after it emerged
that investigators had listened in to a telephone call he had made to the
president's office, apparently seeking help.
Extracts
from a transcript of the conversation, leaked to the media, suggested Mancino
had discussed with a senior official the possibility of getting Italy's chief
anti-mafia prosecutor to intervene.
From 1996
to 2001, Mancino held the speakership of the Senate, the most senior office of
state after the presidency. More recently, he was deputy chairman of the body
that oversees the Italian judiciary.
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