Italy's Andreotti on Trial

...In court he admitted that while living in Pisa as a protected witness—and receiving $3,500 monthly for maintenance of his wife and two children—he had committed three murders and bungled two, including an attempt on a television talk show host who had attacked the Mafia...

...Neither Mannoia nor Di Maggio is a particularly savory figure...

...Following an attempt to flee crime family power struggles and settle in Canada, he returned and informed police of the superboss' hiding place, then fingered Andreotti...

...He can't testify, however...

...under its Witness Protection Program...

...Others give all the credit to Giovanni Falcone, a Palermo magistrate who at that time was in Rome controlling antiMafia activities...

...Certainly the 79-year-old former Prime Minister has been sidelined...

...Both charges against Andreotti are, of course, far more serious than simple venality...

...This remains to be proven, although they cite a range of alleged activities, such as rigged trials, to illustrate the supposed relationship...

...Orlando did not offer any evidence for his assertion, but shortly after he made it several Mafiosi turned state witnesses and—presumably repeating what they had heard—said their bosses had a direct link to "Uncle Giulio...

...This January, for example, the most prominent DC figure affected by the Clean Hands' campaign, Giulio Andreotti—who served seven times as Prime Minister between 1972 and 1992—was back in court for the latest installment of a trial begun two and a half years ago accusing him of collusion with the Mafia while in office...

...But the "Clean Hands" magistrates, as they have been dubbed, haven't quite cleared the air...

...As a result, he was arrested last October...

...Reports of his testimony received international news coverage, and it is a key part of the prosecution's case...

...By 1994 the Christian Democratic Party (DC), the dominant political force here since the end of World War II, was destroyed...

...The magistrates' corruption cleanup has been invigorating...

...He is also a defendant in another trial started over two years ago concerning the 1979 killing of journalist Mino Pecorelli...

...During his January cross-examination Di Maggio seemed tired and downcast as Andreotti's lawyer, who did not directly challenge his story, tried to discredit him...

...Palermo's Mayor Orlando told the Italian news agency ANSA in January, "I fought Giulio Andreotti politically and he has been defeated politically...

...Probably a more significant factor was the stint he did as DC leader in the Chamber of Deputies that convinced other parties he could head a coalition...

...But Mafiosi do not wear labels, he says, insisting that the police, not the politicians, should keep track of them...

...Sicily's magistrates have already gathered some 600,000 pages of documents to buttress their arguments, and most weeks hundreds are added...

...One reason is the number of targets whose day in court has turned into a marathon proceeding...

...A decision is expected later this year...

...But it was Andreotti, despite opposition from the Communists and others, who pushed through a decree extending protective custody terms to prevent Mafia bosses on trial from leaving prison...

...Nevertheless, their strongest hand is still the testimony of two men, Francesco Marino Mannoia and Baldassare Di Maggio...

...Afterward Andreotti commented, "Thank goodness the Mafia didn't kill him before this hearing, otherwise someone might have believed him...

...Under further questioning Di Maggio contradicted himself and was vague about dates, responding often with "I don't know," "perhaps," and "it could be...

...Andreotti's lawyer intends to call members of the family for the defense, presumably to testify that they never saw Andreotti at their villa...

...The judicial path toward a political change is completed...

...EXAMINING A POLITICAL ERA Italy's Andreotti on Trial By Desmond O'grady Rome I in the past six years, the anticorruption campaign launched initially by Milan's magistracy has changed the face of Italian politics—and, many feel, may now be overreaching itself...

...The muchmore complicated other trial is being held in Palermo before a judge...

...Instead, according to Mannoia, a Mafia chieftain shouted at the Prime Minister that the Christian Democrats would lose electoral support if he didn't do as ordered...

...Its best argument to date has been that the Mafia influenced DC politicians in Sicily and they were essential to his becoming Prime Minister...

...The magistrates' line is that the Mafia felt the Prime Minister had betrayed a previous agreement...

...Some believe the United States Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) applied pressure...

...Di Maggio seemed to confirm this when he conceded that witnesses under protection move around the country without supervision, commit crimes and meet one another, enabling them to agree on versions of past events...

...If its witnesses are discredited, the prosecution must prove in other ways that Andreotti either promoted or benefited from an association with the Cosa Nostra...

...Nonetheless, as Italians ask themselves whether their country was governed by a criminal, they are also wondering whether it might not be healthier for the renewal of the political class to be a consequence of elections rather than prosecutions...

...A 44-year-old former mechanic, Di Maggio is a compact, bearded man who was at one time Riina's driver...

...He also called an emergency session of Parliament to rearrest the next morning 14 Mafia members just released from prison...

...They point as well to Andreotti's friendship with financier Michele Sindona, who at least toward the end of his life was involved with organized crime...

...His account was hardly convincing, though...

...But he insisted that he never accused anyone falsely, and sought to reinforce his kiss story by revealing that he had received two million-dollar offers to withdraw it...

...Inevitably, they note, this breeds cronyism to the disadvantage of defense lawyers...

...The link between the two Andreotti trials is Ignazio Salvo, a wealthy Sicilian DC supporter...

...But the muckraking editor of OP magazine embarrassed scores of public personalities with his revelations or threatened revelations, and nothing really incriminating has yet emerged...

...Some are troubled by a system that has judges becoming magistrates and vice versa...

...He said he had agreed to accept one of them largely out of fear, yet did not know how he was to be paid...

...Desmond O'Grady...

...Yet just as the trial has raised questions about recent political practices, it has inspired debate about the role of the judiciary...

...The second contention is shaky: Andreotti's DC faction never topped 18 per cent, with the Sicilians accounting for about 4 per cent...

...That the trials themselves average over three years is another vexation...

...He has stated that Andreotti once made a secret trip to Sicily seeking an explanation for the murder of a DC politician...

...he was done in by the Mafia in 1992...

...It was at his villa that the former Prime Minister is said to have been seen kissing Cosa Nostra superboss Salvatore "Toto" Runa, and Andreotti's supposed wish to have Pecorelli eliminated is said to have been transmitted through Salvo...

...It's a wonder I'm not blamed for the Punic Wars," responds Andreotti...

...Andreotti has admitted that he could have taken organized crime more seriously in the 1970s...

...At times he said he was confused, and he conceded that he had not always told the whole truth...

...There are those who say Andreotti's collusion case amounts to no more than retaliation for such measures...

...The task was facilitated by Di Maggio's having revived a Mafia group to fight for control of his Sicilian village, San Giuseppe Jato...

...Some 200 parliamentarians, accused primarily of accepting bribes, have been caught in its web...

...The slow pace of the cases is not atypical of the magistrates' prosecutorial pattern, though, making it appear that they are bent on trying a whole political era...

...Mannoia, a heroin refiner who confessed to 23 Mafia killings, served as an informant during an American investigation of ties to Italian organized crime and currently lives in the U.S...

...Other former Mafiosi have been slippery, too, and there are hints that they could turn against the prosecution...

...In Perugia, where a jury is hearing the murder case, Andreotti is alleged to have been angered by Pecorelli's embarrassing him...

...The Mayor of Sicily's capital, Leo Luca Orlando, an ex-Christian Democrat with a law-and-order reputation, was the first one to accuse Andreotti of Cosa Nostra collaboration...

...Reacting to the perceived excesses of the Clean Hands investigations, a nonpartisan parliamentary body known as the Bicamerale is re-examining the magistrates' powers...

...Each claims to have actually seen Andreotti in secret meetings with crime bosses...

...Even people who applaud the prolonged corruption purge are uneasy about its methods—for instance, the imprisoning of suspects until they make confessions, and only then releasing them to await trial...

...Interior Minister Giorgio Napolitano warned recently that vendettas are being pursued in the courtroom...

...I am not interested in his trial...

...All the same, during his last term as Prime Minister in 1992, when drug trafficking was making the Mafia richer, more violent and more influential internationally, he acted to suppress it...

...Politicians want them to stop setting the political agenda, in effect, through their initiatives...

...a past NL contributor, is an Australian correspondent in Rome...

...Di Maggio has told the court that he saw Andreotti respectfully kiss Riina at the Salvo's Palermo villa in 1987...