By Stephen Brown
ROME, Nov 28 (Reuters) - Italy's Silvio Berlusconi is not being investigated in connection with a Mafia bomb attack in Florence in 1993, a court said on Saturday after reports that he was being probed on the evidence of a mobster-turned-witness.
The Italian media has buzzed with reports that Berlusconi and an associate would be linked to the Mafia by a mob informant in open court on Friday Dec. 4. But he told a rally in Sardinia that such talk was 'unfounded and insulting'.
Right-wing daily Libero wrote on Saturday that the conservative leader and a senator who has been convicted of association with the Cosa Nostra, Marcello Dell'Utri, were being investigated. A magistrate heading the case denied the report.
'What Libero says is not true,' the chief prosecutor for the city of Florence, Giuseppe Quatrocchi, told reporters.
The Sicilian Mafia declared war on the state in the early 1990s with bomb attacks in Milan and Rome and on Florence's Uffizi Gallery, one of Italy's main cultural treasures.
Five people died in the Florence car-bombing, part of a Mafia campaign to scare the state into relaxing the harsh prison regime served by convicted mobsters.
Mafiosi were jailed for the bombings but a court probe into possible links with leading politicians and business figures was dropped in 1998 -- then reopened this year based on new evidence from a jailed mobster turned state witness, Gaspare Spatuzza.
Spatuzza has told magistrates, in evidence reported widely in the media and confirmed by court sources, that Berlusconi and Dell'Utri had been mentioned to him in connection with the attacks by one of the Mafia bosses now serving multiple life sentences.
But that mobster, Giuseppe Graviano, was quoted by Ansa news agency casting doubt on the evidence, saying: 'What does Gaspare Spatuzza know? He was just a house painter.'
SPIRAL OF DRAMA
The premier's spokesman Paolo Bonaiuti said late on Friday he could 'rule out in the most decisive fashion' reports that Berlusconi would be notified formally he is under investigation. In Italy's legal system, such notification is meant to safeguard its recipient and does not mean charges will be brought.
Bonaiuti also noted that at the time of the attacks, media tycoon Berlusconi was still focused on his media empire, had not entered politics and his Forza Italia party 'was not yet born'.
Berlusconi has warned of a plot by magistrates to bring down his government with false charges, prompting President Giorgio Napolitano to call on Friday for the 'spiral of rising drama' between the prime minister and the judiciary to end.
Next Friday -- the same day Spatuzza gives evidence from his maximum security jail in Turin to a Palermo court that is also investigating his new evidence -- a court in Milan resumes a case against Berlusconi for allegedly bribing British lawyer David Mills $600,000 to withhold details of his business dealings.
In that case, totally unrelated to the Mafia investigations, Mills has been sentenced to 4-1/2 years in jail, pending appeal, for taking a bribe -- which the prime minister denies having paid.
Berlusconi's lawyer Niccolo Ghedini says it is 'legitimate for the prime minister to talk of judicial persecution'. The 73-year-old politician says he has faced 109 trials and 200 million euros ($300 million) in legal fees in the last 15 years.
One of his first acts on winning a third term in 2008 was a a law giving him immunity from prosecution, but in October this was ruled unconstitutional and the cases against him resumed. In the same month his business empire was hit with a 750 million-euro damages bill for bribing a judge in the 1990s.
Berlusconi's media and broadcasting group Mediaset and his holding group Fininvest said on Saturday they were suing the opposition newspaper La Repubblica -- controlled by a business rival, Carlo De Benedetti -- over an article that said Mediaset was '20 percent owned by the Mafia'.
The prime minister's daughter Marina, who runs Fininvest, issued a statement saying Finivest was '100 percent owned by our family, by Silvio Berlusconi and his children'.
(Writing by Stephen Brown; Editing by Robin Pomeroy) ($1=.6699 Euro) Keywords: ITALY BERLUSCONI/LEGAL (stephen.brown@thomsonreuters.com; +39 06 8522 4350; stephen.brown.reuters.com@reuters.net) COPYRIGHT Copyright Thomson Reuters 2009. All rights reserved. The copying, republication or redistribution of Reuters News Content, including by framing or similar means, is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Thomson Reuters.
ROME, Nov 28 (Reuters) - Italy's Silvio Berlusconi is not being investigated in connection with a Mafia bomb attack in Florence in 1993, a court said on Saturday after reports that he was being probed on the evidence of a mobster-turned-witness.
The Italian media has buzzed with reports that Berlusconi and an associate would be linked to the Mafia by a mob informant in open court on Friday Dec. 4. But he told a rally in Sardinia that such talk was 'unfounded and insulting'.
Right-wing daily Libero wrote on Saturday that the conservative leader and a senator who has been convicted of association with the Cosa Nostra, Marcello Dell'Utri, were being investigated. A magistrate heading the case denied the report.
'What Libero says is not true,' the chief prosecutor for the city of Florence, Giuseppe Quatrocchi, told reporters.
The Sicilian Mafia declared war on the state in the early 1990s with bomb attacks in Milan and Rome and on Florence's Uffizi Gallery, one of Italy's main cultural treasures.
Five people died in the Florence car-bombing, part of a Mafia campaign to scare the state into relaxing the harsh prison regime served by convicted mobsters.
Mafiosi were jailed for the bombings but a court probe into possible links with leading politicians and business figures was dropped in 1998 -- then reopened this year based on new evidence from a jailed mobster turned state witness, Gaspare Spatuzza.
Spatuzza has told magistrates, in evidence reported widely in the media and confirmed by court sources, that Berlusconi and Dell'Utri had been mentioned to him in connection with the attacks by one of the Mafia bosses now serving multiple life sentences.
But that mobster, Giuseppe Graviano, was quoted by Ansa news agency casting doubt on the evidence, saying: 'What does Gaspare Spatuzza know? He was just a house painter.'
SPIRAL OF DRAMA
The premier's spokesman Paolo Bonaiuti said late on Friday he could 'rule out in the most decisive fashion' reports that Berlusconi would be notified formally he is under investigation. In Italy's legal system, such notification is meant to safeguard its recipient and does not mean charges will be brought.
Bonaiuti also noted that at the time of the attacks, media tycoon Berlusconi was still focused on his media empire, had not entered politics and his Forza Italia party 'was not yet born'.
Berlusconi has warned of a plot by magistrates to bring down his government with false charges, prompting President Giorgio Napolitano to call on Friday for the 'spiral of rising drama' between the prime minister and the judiciary to end.
Next Friday -- the same day Spatuzza gives evidence from his maximum security jail in Turin to a Palermo court that is also investigating his new evidence -- a court in Milan resumes a case against Berlusconi for allegedly bribing British lawyer David Mills $600,000 to withhold details of his business dealings.
In that case, totally unrelated to the Mafia investigations, Mills has been sentenced to 4-1/2 years in jail, pending appeal, for taking a bribe -- which the prime minister denies having paid.
Berlusconi's lawyer Niccolo Ghedini says it is 'legitimate for the prime minister to talk of judicial persecution'. The 73-year-old politician says he has faced 109 trials and 200 million euros ($300 million) in legal fees in the last 15 years.
One of his first acts on winning a third term in 2008 was a a law giving him immunity from prosecution, but in October this was ruled unconstitutional and the cases against him resumed. In the same month his business empire was hit with a 750 million-euro damages bill for bribing a judge in the 1990s.
Berlusconi's media and broadcasting group Mediaset and his holding group Fininvest said on Saturday they were suing the opposition newspaper La Repubblica -- controlled by a business rival, Carlo De Benedetti -- over an article that said Mediaset was '20 percent owned by the Mafia'.
The prime minister's daughter Marina, who runs Fininvest, issued a statement saying Finivest was '100 percent owned by our family, by Silvio Berlusconi and his children'.
(Writing by Stephen Brown; Editing by Robin Pomeroy) ($1=.6699 Euro) Keywords: ITALY BERLUSCONI/LEGAL (stephen.brown@thomsonreuters.com; +39 06 8522 4350; stephen.brown.reuters.com@reuters.net) COPYRIGHT Copyright Thomson Reuters 2009. All rights reserved. The copying, republication or redistribution of Reuters News Content, including by framing or similar means, is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Thomson Reuters.