Acquittals will no longer be appealable says Berlusconi

(ANSA) - ROME, AUG 17 - Three-time former premier and media mogul Silvio Berlusconi said Wednesday that if his centre-right bloc takes power in the September 25 general election it will pass a reform so that criminal acquittals are no longer appealable by prosecutors and innocent people can no longer be "persecuted".
    At present there are two levels of appeal in the Italian justice system, one more than in most countries, and either the defence or the prosecution can avail themselves of this right.
    Berlusconi has for years said he is the victim of judicial persecution by politically motivated, left-leaning prosecutors.
    He has been convicted definitively only once, for tax fraud, in some 32 criminal cases brought against him, including bribing judges or Senators, paying for sex with an underage prostitute, and bribing witnesses to lie about his bunga bunga parties.
    Throughout these legal woes, he has usually had to fight up to the supreme Court of Cassation, because prosecutors appealed against lower-court acquittals.
    Speaking in his daily 'pill' of news on Facebook Wednesday, Berlusconi said "in Italy thousands of people each year are arrested and tried while being innocent.
    "The trial is already a punishment, which hits the defendant, but also his family, his friends, his work.
    "For this reason it must not drag on ad infinitum, in appeals and counter-appeals.
    "When we govern (Italy), acquittals, first instance or second instance, will not be appealable.
    "A citizen, once they are proven innocent, has the right not to be persecuted forever".
    Berlusconi's centre-right Forza Italia (FI) party is running in an alliance with Matteo Salvini's nationalist League party and the hard right Brothers of Italy (FdI) party of Giorgia Meloni, who is poised to become Italy's first post-fascist and first woman premier after September 25. (ANSA).