Majority exits after M5S Berlusconi Mangano jibe

(ANSA) - ROME, JUN 12 - The ruling centre-right majority left the Lower House during the commemoration of the first anniversary of Silvio Berluscon's death after an opposition leftist populist 5-Star Movement (M5S) MP said they refused to accept the "beatification" of someone who called mafia boss Vittorio Mangano a hero after he kept his vow of silence until death after working as stable manager and to scare kidnappers off at the late three-time premier and media mogul's villa outside Milan.
    "It was not a commemoration but political lynching," said Alessandro Cattaneo of Berlusconi's old centre-right Forza Italia (FI) party.
    M5S MP Riccardo Ricciardi had said: "We do not accept the beatification of a person who said a mafioso like Vittorio Mangano was a hero".
    Mangano, known as The Stable Keeper of Arcore, died at 59 in 2000 after being convicted of a double Cosa Nostra murder in 1995 and sentenced to life imprisonment.
    Berlusconi always officially denied knowing he was a mafioso when he hired him in the 1970s, ostensibly to run the stables at Arcore but in reality, Italian prosecutors have said, to protect the mogul's then young children from the kidnappings that were rife at the time, as well as acting as a go-between with Cosa Nostra. (ANSA).