Google – AFP, Ella Ide (AFP), 24 June 2013
ROME — An Italian court on Monday sentenced Silvio Berlusconi to seven years in jail and banned the former premier from public office after convicting him of paying for sex with an underage prostitute and abuse of power.
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This combo image shows former Italian premier Silvio
Berlusconi and
nightclub dancer Karima El Mahroug (AFP/File, Giuseppe Cacace)
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ROME — An Italian court on Monday sentenced Silvio Berlusconi to seven years in jail and banned the former premier from public office after convicting him of paying for sex with an underage prostitute and abuse of power.
The judges
handed down a sentence that went beyond the request of prosecutors, who had
called for the 76-year-old billionaire to serve six years.
The
sentence is "completely illogical. The judges even went beyond the
prosecutors' request," Berlusconi's lawyer Niccolo Ghedini told journalists
after the verdict was read out.
A small
group of protesters cheered and applauded outside the courtroom, and sang the
national anthem.
The verdict
brings to a climax a two-year trial which sparked a media frenzy amid
allegations of strippers dressed as nuns and erotic party games with topless
girls.
The
sentence will be suspended until all appeals have been exhausted, a process
likely to take years.
Berlusconi's
age also means he is unlikely to ever see the inside of a prison cell because
of lenient sentencing guidelines in Italy for people over the age of 70.
The trial
relates to crimes committed in 2010 when Berlusconi was prime minister, and
revolves around what prosecutors have described as erotic parties held at his
luxury residence outside Milan.
Berlusconi
was accused of paying for sex on several occasions with Moroccan-born Karima
El-Mahroug, a then 17-year-old exotic dancer and busty glamour girl nicknamed
"Ruby the Heart Stealer".
He was also
accused of having called a police station to pressure for El-Mahroug's release
from custody when she was arrested for theft.
His defence
claimed he believed El-Mahroug was the niece of former Egyptian president Hosni
Mubarak and wanted to avoid a diplomatic incident, but prosecutors insisted it
was a bid to conceal their liaison.
While abuse
of office was the more serious of the charges, it was the sex with the pole
dancer after racy "bunga bunga" evenings in a basement room of his
mansion that mesmerised the public.
El-Mahroug
described the "bunga bunga" sessions of erotic dancing to
interrogators in 2010, saying Berlusconi had picked up the custom from former
Libyan dictator Moamer Kadhafi.
Both the
flamboyant billionaire and El-Mahroug denied having had sex.
Prosecutor
Ilda Boccassini told the court in her summing up speech last month that
El-Mahroug was "part of a prostitution system set up for the personal
sexual satisfaction of the defendant".
She said
the dancer quickly became the premier's "favourite" and had not
admitted the relationship with him only because she had received as much as 4.5
million euros ($5.8 million) from him.
El-Mahroug
proved an unreliable witness, admitting in May that she had lied to
investigators about the parties -- going back on an earlier claim that
strippers had "bodily stimulated" Berlusconi -- and saying she had
invented the vast sum of money.
She still
admitted to receiving tens of thousands of euros for attending parties and set
up a beauty salon.
The former
cruise ship singer has long blamed his legal woes on persecution by
"Communist" judges, and any perceived "victory" on the part
of the left could spark an explosive reaction from loyalists.
A Milan
court last month upheld his conviction for tax fraud, confirming the punishment
of a year in prison and a five-year ban from public office which is frozen
pending a second appeal.
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