Former Italian parliament member Dell'Utri flees before court appeal

PALERMO , Italy, April 11 (UPI) -- Marcello Dell’Utri, former Italian parliament member and ally of former president Silvio Berlusconi, has fled Italy before his appeal of a conviction for Mafia association, authorities said Friday.

Dell’Utri, 72, who helped Berlusconi form his Forza Italia political party, was scheduled to have his final appeal heard Tuesday. He was declared a fugitive, and presumed to have left the country, after the court was unable to serve him with an arrest warrant last week.

He was sentenced to seven years imprisonment by a Palermo court carrying out “mediation” between Cosa Nostra figures and Berlusconi in the 1970s, an association prosecutors said lasted until the 1990s.

A telephone call, intercepted by police, suggested Dell’Utri fled to Lebanon, Guinea-Bissau or the Dominican Republic. He is being sought “nationally and internationally,” Sicilian anti-Mafia investigators said in a statement. Berlusconi, 77, is currently awaiting directions on how he will serve his one-year sentence for tax fraud.

[Guardian]