The Palermo Assize Court of Appeal acquitted the former officers of the Ros Mario Mori, Antonio Subranni and Giuseppe De Donno and Senator Marcello Dell'Utri at the trial on the so-called State-Mafia negotiation, accused of threatening the State Political Body .
In the first instance they had all been sentenced to very severe penalties. Instead, the accusations against the repentant Giovanni Brusca have been declared prescribed. Penalty reduced to the boss Leoluca Bagarella. Confirmed the 12-year sentence of the mafia boss Nino Cinà.
As regards the reduction of the sentence of Bagarella, the judges have re-qualified the offense as an attempted threat to the political body of the State, declaring the charges partially prescribed. This resulted in a slight reduction in the sentence passed from 28 to 27 years.
The former officers of the Ros Mario Mori, Antonio Subranni and Giuseppe De Donno were instead acquitted because the "fact does not constitute a crime", while Dell'Utri "for not having committed the fact".
At the end of the first degree trial the Court of Assizes had inflicted 12 years on Dell'Utri, Mori, Subranni and Cinà and 8 on De Donno. On trial, but for the crime of perjury, the former interior minister Nicola Mancino was also finished and was acquitted.
"It is an acquittal of which I and the colleague who defends Giuseppe De Donno have always been convinced. Finally the truth has come out at the cost of sacrifice and hard work", the comment on the sentence of the lawyer Basilio Milio, lawyer of the general Mario Mori. "We have heard from both General Mori and De Donno and they are very happy. The sentence establishes that the negotiation does not exist. It is a hoax, a false historian", he added.
"We are happy because our client was declared unrelated to this charge, after 25 years of trials, in relation to the period after '94", said the lawyer Francesco Centonze, lawyer of the former senator Marcello Dell'Utri. "This is the necessary outcome in the light of the trial papers," he added. "Dell'Utri was obviously not the trait d'union between the mafia and politics", he concluded.
(Unioneonline / lf)