Italian Ex-Premier Acquitted in 1979 Killing of Journalist

Former Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti, the dominant political figure of post-World War II Italy, was acquitted Friday night of charges that he ordered Mafiosi to carry out the killing of a muckraking Italian journalist 20 years ago.

The verdict ended a sensational 3 1/2-year trial in which the prosecution’s case hinged on the word of a single Mafia turncoat. All five co-defendants accused in the slaying of Mino Pecorelli also were absolved after an eight-member jury deliberated for five days.

For Andreotti, the judgment was partial vindication in a campaign to clear his name of allegations at the heart of corruption scandals that broke in the early 1990s. He had been widely accused of serving for decades as the Sicilian Mafia’s political patron, shielding its bosses from prosecution in return for support for his long-ruling Christian Democratic Party.

The senator for life, still on trial in Sicily in a separate case for alleged association with the Mafia, has declared that all charges were concocted by his enemies inside and outside the mob. He has continued showing up for work in the Senate, acting very much the elder statesman.

He got a boost when Pope John Paul II sent him greetings on Andreotti’s 80th birthday in January and again when the Vatican welcomed Friday’s verdict “with great satisfaction.”

Andreotti was not in court in Perugia for the verdict. He said at his Rome apartment that he was confident of acquittal in his remaining trial, due to finish next month. “I’m hoping for an extra lease on life so that I can better forget” both trials, he added.

During seven terms as prime minister, Andreotti was a wily power broker who had a hand in just about every significant Italian political event from the 1950s to the early 1990s. While many Italians believe that he might have cut deals with the mob, most found it hard to imagine that he ordered a murder and were shocked when prosecutors sought a life sentence--Italy’s maximum.

“This verdict spares Italy the shame of having been led by a murderer for years,” said Gianfranco Fini, leader of the right-wing National Alliance party.

Father Ennio Pintacuda, a Roman Catholic priest in Sicily, noted that the acquittals left the murder unsolved. “It seems to take us back to the dark ages of inconclusive trials against the Mafia,” he said.

The other defendants acquitted with Andreotti were a former senator from his party, Claudio Vitalone, two convicted mob bosses and the two alleged gunmen.

Pecorelli, who tapped sources in the Italian secret services and targeted politicians in his scandal magazine, was struck by four bullets outside his Rome office on March 20, 1979, when Andreotti was prime minister.

The prosecution leaned on testimony by Tommaso Buscetta, a Mafia turncoat who began cooperating with police in the 1980s. He said two Mafia bosses told him in 1982 that mob hit men had killed Pecorelli at the behest of Andreotti, who feared that the journalist had uncovered embarrassing revelations about the prime minister.

However, prosecutors never said exactly what those supposed revelations were. Nor could they produce Buscetta’s alleged informants; one is dead, the other is imprisoned in the United States.

Legal specialists said Andreotti now stands a better chance of acquittal in his parallel trial because the state is relying on some of the same testimony and witnesses, including Buscetta.

Some commentators viewed Friday’s verdict as a new setback for Italy’s witness protection program, which since 1991 has relied on squealing by hundreds of informers to put leading Mafiosi behind bars. The program has been under review in Parliament since 1997 when a turncoat under state protection was charged with committing a murder and restarting a Mafia group.