Andreotti, who was Prime Minister seven times and came to represent post-war Christian Democratic Italy, said, however, that he would appeal.

“I continue to believe in Italian justice, even when the judges come up with such absurdities” he said.

Andreotti, 83, a senator for life, has been dogged for years by allegations that he had close links to the Mafia. Three years ago, after a trial lasting years, he was acquitted in Perugia on charges of involvement in the 1979 killing of Mino Pecorelli, 51, the editor of a newspaper called OP (Osservatorio Politico), which had a record of publishing scandalous gossip based on inside information.

In Perugia, however, the prosecution urged an appeals court to reconsider, arguing that the evidence of Mafia pentiti (supergrasses) pointed directly to Andreotti. Prosecutors said that Mafia gunmen had killed Pecorelli at Andreotti’s behest because the former Prime Minister feared that the journalist was about to publish damaging information relating to Andreotti’s alleged role in the kidnapping and murder of Aldo Moro, another former Christian Democrat Prime Minister, by the Red Brigades in 1978. Andreotti has been accused of failing to do all that he could to free Moro, who planned to take the Italian Communist Party into government. In turn, Andreotti has claimed that he was the victim of Mafia bosses who resented his crackdown on organised crime.

Silvio Berlusconi, the Prime Minister, said that Andreotti had been the “victim of justice gone mad . . . this is beyond all logic”. The centre-right leader, who himself has been the subject of repeated corruption charges and is currently on trial in Milan, said that Italian judges were trying to “change the course of democratic politics in this country and rewrite the history of Italy”. The verdict was further proof that the Italian system of justice was in urgent need of “reconstruction”.

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