Dell’Utri lawyer says ignore extradition

P(ANSA) – Rome, May 6 – The Lebanese lawyer for ex-Senator Marcello Dell’Utri said Tuesday that he will ask authorities there to ignore Italy’s extradition request. Akram Azoury told ANSA that Italy violated the extradition treaty between the two countries when it requested the arrest of Dell’Utri, who faces Mafia association charges in Italy.BRHe said he will put his request to Lebanon’s attorney general on Wednesday, just two days before Italy’s supreme Court of Cassation is scheduled to give its final decision on Dell’Utri’s seven-year conviction for links to the Sicilian Cosa Nostra Mafia imposed in March.BROn Monday, Justice Minister Andrea Orlando said that Italy’s extradition request to Lebanon for Dell’Utri, former senior advisor to ex-premier Silvio Berlusconi, had been finalized.BRDell’Utri was captured in the capital of Lebanon last month, where he had allegedly fled Italian justice ahead of a likely final jail conviction for Mafia ties.BRHe was later hospitalized under police guard in Beirut.BRDell’Utri, 72, has said that he did not intend to evade authorities by leaving Italy, but had been out of the country for medical tests.BRSources have told ANSA that the extradition request was slowed because court authorities in Beirut had requested all documents related to the extradition be translated from Italian into Arabic.BRItaly had requested Interpol’s help in tracking Dell’Utri in early April, after an Italian court deemed the ex-Senator to be a flight risk due to the case before the Cassation Court. His original conviction came when a Palermo court found that Dell’Utri sealed “a pact of protection” with Cosa Nostra for Berlusconi at a meeting in May 1974 – a meeting that the court said “formed the genesis of the relationship that linked the businessman (Berlusconi) and the Mafia with Dell’Utri’s mediation”.BRBerlusconi employed a Mafia boss and killer recommended by Dell’Utri, the late Vittorio Mangano, as an alleged stable manager in the mid 1970s – but allegedly to protect his children from kidnappings that were then rampant in Italy.BRDell’Utri is also the former head of the media magnate’s advertising arm and is credited with creating the three-time premier’s centre-right party, Forza Italia, in 1993, six months before it swept to victory in general elections.BRAccording to prosecutors, Dell’Utri had been considering since last fall where to flee if he lost his case in the Court of Cassation.BRThey say authorities intercepted a conversation involving Dell’Utri’s brother Alberto in a Rome restaurant discussing passports and safe havens for his brother, including Lebanon where he said Marcello Dell’Utri allegedly had connections.BR”You have to have people in place who give you a hand, help you…so you do not have to go there and not know anyone…but these (matters) are well settled,” Alberto Dell’Utri reportedly said.BR/P
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