Silvio Berlusconi sentenced to seven years in jail in bunga bunga sex trial
Silvio Berlusconi was given a seven-year prison sentence and banned from holding public office for life on Monday after an Italian court found him guilty of abuse of office and paying for sex with an underage prostitute.
Nick Squires
By Nick Squires, Rome
4:28PM BST 24 Jun 2013
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Silvio Berlusconi bunga bunga trial: six things you should know
Three female judges in the court in Milan deliberated for more than seven hours before finding the 76-year-old former prime minister guilty on both charges.
The convictions were a bitter blow for Mr Berlusconi and his supporters, with close allies denouncing the court’s verdict as “absurd” and “a coup d’etat” by an allegedly left-wing judiciary.
“This sentence is a rape of the law in the name of a political struggle carried out by judicial means,” said Luca d’Alessandro, an MP from Mr Berlusconi's conservative party.
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Mr Berlusconi was not in court but in a statement handed down a few hours after the verdict, he said he had been “convinced” that he would be found not guilty, claiming there was not enough evidence against him.
“Instead they handed down an unbelievable sentence, of a harshness never before witnessed, in order to try to eliminate me from the political life of this country."
He insisted he would fight the verdict he described as a "persecution", insisting he was "absolutely innocent".
The sex trial, which lasted more than two years, lifted the lid on the “bunga bunga” parties Mr Berlusconi began organising at his mansion outside Milan in 2010 after his long-suffering wife announced that she was filing for divorce.
The media tyc00n insisted publicly and in court that the parties were nothing more than “elegant dinners” at which he crooned sentimental love songs and regaled his female guests with anecdotes.
At most, he said, they involved the young women, who were “by their nature exhibitionists”, performing “burlesque contests” which he conceded he watched with “great interest”.
But the three judges in the trial agreed with the prosecution that Mr Berlusconi had developed a system of prostitution designed to “satisfy his sexual pleasure”.
The judges recommended that more than 30 witnesses who gave evidence on Mr Berlusconi’s behalf, including topless models and a Neapolitan musician with whom he has recorded CDs of sugary ballads, be investigated for false testimony.
Mr Berlusconi was accused of paying tens of thousands of euros for sex with a Moroccan-born erotic dancer, Karima El Mahroug, who called herself “Ruby the Heart Stealer”.
Now 20, at the time she was just 17. Under Italian law it is illegal to pay for sex with a woman under the age of 18. Mr Berlusconi claimed she had told him she was 24.
In court, she denied having sex with the septuagenarian, but in an intercepted phone call she told a friend, Caterina Pasquino: “I’m at Berlusconi’s, I’ll dance, then I’ll strip, then I’ll have sex.” She later said she had been joking.
The three-time prime minister and owner of AC Milan was also accused of abusing his political office by putting pressure on Milan police to release her after she was arrested on charges of stealing money and jewellery from her flatmate.
Mr Berlusconi told the police that Ruby was the grand-daughter of Hosni Mubarak, the then Egyptian president, and that she must be released in order to avoid a diplomatic incident.
Miss El Mahroug told investigators that she had witnessed showgirls dressing up in nurses’ outfits and police uniforms, stripping down to their underwear and engaging in mock lesbian shows.
One model, Marystelle Polanco, performed a dance while wearing a Barack Obama face mask with white knickers and suspenders.
The women allegedly “touched the intimate parts” of Mr Berlusconi, who in turn touched them intimately, rewarding them with envelopes stuffed full of thousands of euros.
On one occasion they kissed and fondled a statuette of Priapus, the god of fertility, according to the testimony of two 18-year-old beauty contestants who said they were so shocked by what they saw that they immediately asked to leave.
The women performed erotic dances in an underground “bunga bunga” room at his villa, featuring a stage, a bar and a dance floor.
The villa, in Arcore outside Milan, was swiftly dubbed “Hardcore” by the Italian press.
Piero Longo, one of Mr Berlusconi’s lawyers, said they would appeal the conviction. If that is unsuccesful, Mr Berlusconi has recourse to a second appeal in front of Italy’s Supreme Court. Together they could drag the case out for years.
Pending the appeals, the billionaire businessman will not go to jail.
The many trials against Mr Berlusconi have an acute political dimension — for 20 years he has accused judges and magistrates of being tools of the centre-left opposition.
He and his supporters could withdraw backing from the fragile, four-month-old coalition government of Enrico Letta, the prime minister, in order to force new elections which he would have a fighting chance of winning.
That would enable him to bring in an immunity law or other measures which could shield him from this sentence and others that he faces, notably a four-year sentence for tax fraud in his Mediaset company which he is currently appealing.
The Supreme Court is to rule on that case later this year and could in theory send Mr Berlusconi to prison, though defendants in their seventies are rarely locked up in Italy.
But the ruling could unleash what has been dubbed “the nuclear option” — MPs from his People of Freedom party have threatened a mass resignation that would pitch the coalition into chaos.
