Top court gives nod to Berlusconi sex trial judges

Feb 14, 2012, 19:09 GMT

Rome - Italy's Constitutional Court ruled Tuesday that magistrates presiding a trial in which Silvio Berlusconi is charged with paying an underage dancer for sex are qualified to do so.

The court, which is based in Rome, said in a statement that it had 'rejected the recourse,' made against magistrates and prosecutors handling the trial against Italy's former premier.

The decision followed a public hearing before the court earlier Tuesday.

The competency of the magistrates and the prosecutors in the trial against Berlusconi, which began in Milan in April, had been challenged by his lawyers and by the lower house of parliament, the Chamber of Deputies, of which the former premier is a member and where his conservatives have a majority.

They argue that Berlusconi should be tried by a special tribunal for top public officials since the alleged offences where committed in 2010, when Berlusconi was still in office.

In the trial, prosecutors also accuse Berlusconi of having abused his then-position as premier to cover up his liaison with the dancer, Karima El Mahroug, who was 17 at the time and thus underage in terms of Italy's prostitution laws.

A senior member of Berlusconi's People of Freedom party, Sandro Bondi, slammed the Consitutional Court's decision, reiterating accusations often made by Berlusconi that leftist magistrates were persecuting him.

'We find ourselves in a diminished democracy,' Bondi said.

But the ruling was welcomed by the centre-left Democratic Party which was the main opposition in parliament before Berlusconi's resignation as premier in November.

'The rejection of the recourse confirms what we have said: that Berlusconi has used parliament and bent (public) institutions for his own private interests,' said Marilena Samperi, a Democratic Party member of the Chamber of Deputies.

The next hearing in the trial against Berlusconi is scheduled for Friday.

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