A Palermo preliminary hearings judge on Wednesday cleared Calogero Mannino, a former minister with the now-defunct Christian Democrat (DC) party, of charges in connection with alleged negotiations between the State and the Mafia in the early 1990s.
The prosecution in the 23-month trial had requested nine years, but the court found Mannino not guilty of threatening the political body of the State.
The trial looked into allegations that the State engaged in talks with the Sicilian Mafia in a bid to stop a bloody bombing campaign that claimed the lives of crusading anti-Mafia prosecutors Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino in 1992, and killed 10 people and damaged art sites in Rome, Florence and Milan in 1993.
Mannino has always denied any involvement.
Prosecutors Nino Di Matteo, Roberto Tartaglia and Vittorio Teresi said they would appeal the sentence, but Palermo Chief Prosecutor Francesco Lo Voi said his office would decide whether or not to appeal the ruling after the judge releases the motivation for the sentence.
Mannino called the judge's decision "courageous".
"It confirms the faith that I've always had in justice and in judges," Mannino he said.
Senator Giuseppe Marinello of the Popular Area (AP) parliamentary caucus comprised of the New Centre Right (NCD) and the small centrist UDC party said the acquittal can't make up for the many years Mannino spent "under the nightmare of a trial".
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