by Giulio Ambrosetti

For ten years, Senator Giulio Andreotti, one of the Italian political men best known throughout the world, has been on trial. The charge is serious: mafia association. This is a very hard hit to Andreotti, and also to Italy's credibility internationally. We're talking about a man who in a political career more than fifty years long, has been President of the Council of Ministers seven times.
The singular aspects of this story are two. The first is the nature of the charges against Andreotti - he's implicated in mafia stories. The second doesn't only affect this famous political man, it affects the entire civil life of Italy. The reason for this last affirmation can be seen all in one question: Where? In what nation in the so-called civilized world can a man be under a charge for ten years, with no clarification of whether he's guilty or innocent?
The trial of Senator Andreotti is like a litmus showing how Italy administrates Justice. The request for Andreotti's indictment was formulated by the Palermo judges in 1993. The indictment before the Court was entered in 1995. The verdict absolving Andreotti was back in the autumn of 1999. Now, six years later, which is a lot, one would think the story could have been considered over. But no. When a defendant is judged innocent, in Italy the investigative judges can request a second stage trial (Appeal). If the accused is absolved a second time, they can request a third stage trial in the Court of Cassation (which pronounces upon the procedural legitimacy of the judicial proceeding, not its merits). For Andreotti the judges requested the second stage trial, presently in session.
Justice doesn't work this way in most of the nations of the Western world. Only the accused, if found guilty, can appeal. The Italian judicial system, as one can see, slows Justice down. In Italy the investigative judges exercise great powers: powers that become a serious problem if mixed with politics. And in Italy, as several judges have admitted, certain sectors of the magistrature, in the past, have indeed played politics.
Just recently an investigating judge, a man who was practicing in the offices of the Court of Milan in the early nineties, admitted candidly that he had played politics in the context of Tangentopolis, in that period in which several judges felt it was their duty to perform certain extrajudicial functions.
Today Andreotti is still on trial, the above-cited mafia Appeal trial. The ex Council President is in danger of being convicted. Why? Because less than a year ago he was sentenced to 24 years in prison by the Court of Perugia, together with mafia boss Gaetano Badalamenti, for the murder of journalist Mino Pecorelli long ago in 1979. This conviction could have repercussions in the second stage mafia trial. Let's see why.
Andreotti, in the trial where he was charged with mafia dealings (both in the first stage trial and in the second), always denied having known the cousins Nino and Ignazio Salvo, two Sicilian tax collectors, both dead, connected to the mafia world. In the decision on the crime against the journalist, Pecorelli - which Andreotti was convicted for - it came out that the Salvo cousins had been made to kill Pecorelli as a favor to Andreotti. Now if Andreotti accepted this particular "favor" from the Salvo cousins, it is clear that he knew these two tax collectors who were close with the mafia. Moral: the prosecutors who charge him in the second stage mafia trial have evidence that can support the theory that Andreotti lied when he said he didn't know the Salvos.
All Andreotti's troubles are centered around one fact: his presumed friendship with the Salvo cousins. But this fact also is very controversial. In fact Andreotti's relationship with the Salvos, in the course of the trial for the Pecorelli murder, was not proved beyond every reasonable doubt. The person who stated that Andreotti knew the Salvo cousins ten years ago was the pentito Tommaso Buscetta, who died a few years ago of cancer, while under FBI protection. Buscetta stated that Gaetano Badalamenti, known as Don Tano, was the one who told him it was the Salvos who murdered Pecorelli and that they did it as a favor to Andreotti.
Now there was only one way to try to confirm whether Buscetta actually received such an important confidence from Don Tano Badalamenti or not: ask Badalamenti himself, original boss from Cinisi, today serving a sentence of almost a half a century in the United States prisons, arrested by New York Prosecutor Rudolph Giuliani in the investigation of the so-called "Pizza Connection." But the Italian judges never got boss Badalamenti's statement. Why?
At this point the story gets really ugly. The Italian investigators did indeed try interrogating Badalamenti. It was Antonino Lombardo, Marshall of the Carabinieri of Terrasini, he tried in 1995. He went to America twice, specifically to interrogate Badalamenti. Badalamenti answered that he was willing to return to Italy and tell what he knew about this, and about some other things: "I'm willing to come to Italy and confront the people who have stated different things from those which I have reported to you," said Don Tano Badalamenti. A refutation of Buscetta's statements? It appears so.
It was decided that Marshall Lombardo would go to the U.S. again to collect Badalamenti's testimony and, hopefully, to schedule said boss's reentry into Italy.
But the evening of February 23rd of 1995, the day before Marshall Lombardo's third departure for America, then Mayor of Palermo Leoluca Orlando attacked Marshall Lombardo in a television broadcast, accusing him of engaging in relations with mafiosi. Over the next few days Marshall Lombardo received threats. Worse, the threats were also extended to his family members. The evening of March 4th, the Marshall took his own life.
The finale of this story is part written, part still to write. The boss Don Tano Badalamenti was not further interrogated. Andreotti was convicted at trial of the Pecorelli homicide. And is now in danger of being convicted for associations with the mafia. This is what's going on in Italy in the year of our lord 2003.