Ex-PM Andreotti jailed for 24 years for killing reporter

Giulio Andreotti, the "little Caesar" of post-war Italian politics who was Prime Minister seven times, was found guilty of murdering a journalist and sentenced to 24 years' imprisonment yesterday.

The verdict, which shocked Rome's political establishment on a quiet Sunday, was delivered by the assizes court in Perugia, Umbria, and overturned the senator-for-life's acquittal in the case three years ago.

Another of those charged, Gaetano Badalamenti, a convicted mobster serving a 30-year term in the United States, was also found guilty and given the same sentence.

Andreotti, who is 83, was not in court for the hearing, but said later: "I've always believed in justice ... but this evening I am struggling to accept such an absurdity."

Andreotti, Badalamenti and three others were acquitted in September 1999 of conspiring to murder Mino Pecorelli, a journalist who specialised in sensational exposés.

Mr Pecorelli had withdrawn a story alleging financial impropriety by Andreotti after receiving a large payment from a friend of Andreotti's. The prosecution alleged that Pecorelli was preparing to publish new revelations that would have brought about Andreotti's downfall. He was shot dead on a street in Rome in 1979.

Andreotti's previous acquittal was little surprise. Even the prosecution admitted that the evidence against him was only circumstantial.

But yesterday's verdict caused a storm. The Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi, himself embroiled in various lawsuits alleging corruption, said: "Andreotti is the victim of justice gone mad, which must be reconstructed. The verdict is the final phase of a judicial scheme through which politicised sections of the judiciary have tried to change the course of political democracy and rewrite Italy's history."

Mr Berlusconi said he expected the verdict to be overturned by Italy's highest court of appeal. But one veteran observer of Italian politics said Andreotti had more to fear from a separate case alleging his involvement with the Mafia in Sicily, where the evidence against him is stronger, and for which an appeal against his acquittal has yet to be heard.