Berlusconi Bribery Trial Reopens

The trial of the Italian prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, returned to court yesterday after 10 months of high parliamentary and judicial drama, and ran straight into further controversy, the prosecution claiming that the presiding judge was biased in favour of the defendant.

Mr Berlusconi, who was not in court, is accused of bribing judges, an offence for which his former lawyer has already been given a five-year prison sentence.

The prosecution had hoped for a swift conclusion to the trial, but on Thursday the presiding judge, Francesco Castellano, said that the hearings would soon be suspended to prevent the trial being exploited in the European and regional elections in June.

The trial was adjourned last June when parliament granted Mr Berlusconi and four other state officials immunity from prosecution. The law was later overturned as unconstitutional.

Although it was decided that the original trial should resume, a new panel of judges was appointed to hear it. In court yesterday lawyers representing the interested parties joined the prosecutors in asking Mr Castellano to step aside because of comments he had made about the trial before he became directly involved.

In a December 2002 interview with Il Giornale - a newspaper owned by Mr Berlusconi's brother - Mr Castellano appeared to sympathise with the prime min ister's complaint that he is the victim of a politically motivated witch hunt.

After several hours' deliberation Mr Castellano and the two other judges rejected the request for his removal.

Mr Berlusconi is accused of bribing judges to prevent the sale of a state-owned food chain, SME, to another businessman in the 1980s. He denies the charge. Last November Cesare Previti, who was Mr Berlusconi's lawyer at the time, was acquitted of the charge in the SME case but convicted of bribing another judge with money from a secret offshore account belonging to Mr Berlusconi's business empire.