Berlusconi confident of acquittal

Judges in the corruption trial of Silvio Berlusconi withdrew yesterday to decide their verdict and the prime minister said he was confident he would not be convicted.

Chief judge Francesco Castellano told the court in Italy's financial capital Milan that he and his two fellow judges would retire to a hotel to consider their ruling after nearly five years of hearings and controversy. The sentence is not expected before this afternoon. Mr Berlusconi, a billionaire media mogul, is accused of bribing Rome judges in the late 1980s and again in 1991 to win favourable rulings for his Fininvest business empire.

"I don't think there will be a conviction," the prime minister said at the presentation of a new book by an Italian author.

State prosecutors have demanded an eight-year prison term and called for Mr Berlusconi to be barred from public office for life. One of Fininvest's lawyers and a judge were found guilty in the same case last year.

Mr Berlusconi, the first serving Italian prime minister to stand in a criminal trial, has denied the charges and says he is the victim of a politically motivated judicial witchhunt.

"It is a good sign that the judges are retiring for at least 36 hours. It gives us hope that they are going to consider the case carefully," one of Mr Berlusconi's lawyers, Nicolo Ghedini, told reporters in Milan's imposing, fascist-era court house. Whatever the verdict, the prime minister's entourage has made it clear that Mr Berlusconi will not resign.

Italian law allows for two appeals before the definitive sentence is delivered. That could take years given the country's notoriously slow legal system, triggering a statute of limitations that would see the case dropped.

However, a guilty verdict would represent a hammer blow to his prestige and would be leapt on by opposition parties, who are gearing up for general elections set for 2006.