Court chief slams Berlusconi’s ‘neurotic’ claims

THE head of Italy’s highest court slammed Silvio Berlusconi’s “neurotic” accusations that the justice system was biased yesterday as the prime minister awaits trial for abuse of power and having underage sex.

Berlusconi has rejected a request by prosecutors to put him immediately on trial, calling it a “farce,” and dismissed their case as a pretext by a politically-biased judiciary to smear him in the media and eventually oust him.

But the president of the constitutional court, Ugo De Siervo, said that to suggest that the 15 judges who sit in his court are anything but entirely impartial is a “slander against the court and gravely offensive.”

“A number of us are quite moderate and now we have been labelled. We are not Bolsheviks,” he told reporters, condemning Berlusconi’s accusations as “exaggerated and neurotic.”

Berlusconi and his allies regularly accuse the Italian justice system of being a haven for communists who spend their time plotting against him.

Prosecutors in Milan who are overseeing the case allege that the 74-year-old premier paid for sex with a nightclub dancer known as Ruby the heartbreaker, who was 17 at the time.

They also allege that Berlusconi improperly used his power by asking police to release her after she had been arrested for suspected theft in May.

De Siervo said that a decision over the schedule of any trial would take several months.

Italian lawyer and Berlusconi ally Niccolo Ghedini said if the trial were to start immediately he would contest the competence of the Milan court in a vote in the lower house of parliament.