Rome
Giulio Andreotti, a frequent Italian prime minister, was sentenced to 24 years in prison this week for ordering a Mafia hit on a journalist. Mino Pecorelli, a reporter who was researching Andreotti’s alleged Mafia connections, was shot in the back four times as he left his office in 1979. Andreotti surrounded himself with suspicious characters—he once said, “Trees need manure around them in order to grow”—but he was an incredibly popular politician, holding some government post almost every year since 1947. Andreotti, 83, probably won’t serve any jail time because of his age, but he said the decision had “knocked the wind out of me.” Italian politicians and media were nearly unanimous in denouncing the guilty verdict as a travesty of justice.
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