page_title: Giulio Andreotti
section_title: Trial for Mafia association
hierarchical_section_title: Giulio Andreotti / Controversies / Trial for Mafia association
caption_attribution_description: English: Salvo Lima
context_page_description: Giulio Andreotti OMI SMOM OCSG OESSH was an Italian politician and statesman who served as the 41st Prime Minister of Italy and leader of the Christian Democracy party; he was the sixth longest-serving Prime Minister since the Italian Unification and the second longest-serving post-war Prime Minister, after Silvio Berlusconi. Andreotti is widely considered the most powerful and prominent politician of the so-called First Republic.
  Beginning as a protégé of Alcide De Gasperi, Andreotti achieved cabinet rank at a young age and occupied all the major offices of state over the course of a forty-year political career, being seen as a reassuring figure by the civil service, business community, and Vatican. In foreign policy, he guided Italy's European Union integration and established closer relations with the Arab world. Admirers of Andreotti saw him as having mediated political and social contradictions, enabling the transformation of a substantially rural country into the world's fifth-biggest economy. Critics said he had done nothing to challenge a system of patronage that had led to pervasive corruption.
context_section_description: Andreotti came under suspicion because his relatively small faction within the Christian Democrats included Sicilian Salvatore Lima. In Sicily, Lima cooperated with a Palermo-based Mafia, which operated below the surface of public life by using control of large numbers of votes to enable mutually beneficial relationships with local politicians. Andreotti said, "But Lima never spoke to me about these things." By the 1980s the old low-profile Mafia was overthrown by the Corleonesi, an extremely violent faction led by fugitive Salvatore Riina. Whereas old Mafia bosses had been cautious about violence, Riina's targeting of anti-mafia officials proved ever more counter-productive. The 1982 murders of parliamentarian Pio La Torre and Carabinieri general Carlo Alberto Dalla Chiesa led to the Maxi Trial. Prosecutors, who could not be disciplined or removed except by their own self-government board, the CSM, were given increased powers. After the January 1992 upholding of the Maxi Trial verdicts as definitive convictions by the supreme court, Riina embarked on a renewed campaign which claimed the lives of the prosecuting magistrates, Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, and their police guards. As Riina intended, the assassination of Falcone discredited Andreotti and prevented him becoming the president of Italy. It also led to prosecutors being seen as epitomising civic virtue. In January 1993 Riina was arrested in Palermo. In the aftermath of Riina's capture there were further Mafia bomb outrages that included terror attacks on art galleries and churches, which left ten members of the public dead, and led to weakening of rules on the evidence which prosecutors could use to bring charges.
  Labelled by Italian media as the "trial of the century", legal action against Andreotti began on 27 March 1993 in the city of Palermo. The prosecution accused the former prime minister of "[making] available to the mafia association named Cosa Nostra for the defense of its interests and attainment of its criminal goals, the influence and power coming from his position as the leader of a political faction".  Prosecutors said in return for electoral support of Lima and assassination of Andreotti's enemies, he had agreed to protect the Mafia, which had expected him to fix the Maxi Trial. Andreotti's defense was predicated on character attacks against the prosecution's key witnesses who were themselves involved with the mafia. This created a "his word against theirs" dynamic between a prominent politician and a handful of criminals. The defence said Andreotti had been a long-time politician of national stature, never beholden to Lima; and that far from providing protection, Andreotti had passed many tough anti-mafia laws when in government during the 80's. According to Andreotti's lawyers, the prosecution case was based on conjecture and inference, without any concrete proof of direct involvement by Andreotti. The defence also contended the prosecution relied on the word of mafia turncoats whose evidence had been contradictory. One such informer testified that Riina and Andreotti had met and exchanged a "kiss of honour". It emerged that the informer had received a US$300,000 'bonus' and committed a number of murders while in the witness protection programme. Andreotti dismissed the allegation against him as "lies and slander […] the kiss of Riina, mafia summits […] scenes out of a comic horror film".
  Andreotti was eventually acquitted on 23 October 1999. However, together with the greater series of corruption cases of Mani pulite, Andreotti's trials marked the purging and renewal of Italy's political system.
caption: Salvatore Lima
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