Social services or house arrest? Silvio Berlusconi prefers the first option, he is well aware that the second would greatly limit his margin of action in the electoral campaign. However, the choice is not up to him, but to the Surveillance Court of Milan, which is meeting today to establish how the former Cavaliere will have to serve the sentence linked to the definitive sentence for tax fraud received last summer at the end of the trial for rights Mediaset television. The hearing is scheduled for 17 pm, but the decision will hardly be taken by today, since the Court has five days to pronounce.
With a ten-page document, the lawyers Niccolò Ghedini and Franco Coppi presented a brief on Monday afternoon asking that Berlusconi be entrusted to a "hospitalized therapeutic centre" not for the elderly, but for the mentally and physically disabled, people on whom to develop "new stimuli as subjects resigned to disability".
Previously, the Catholic newspaper Avvenire had anticipated in recent days that the leader of Forza Italia could serve his sentence in a facility for disabled elderly people in the Milanese hinterland (even easier to reach than in Milan for the former Premier, who has arrangement of Villa San Martino in Arcore). An activity that would occupy him only for one day a week, and not even for many hours ("in the morning or in the afternoon, at your choice", writes Avvenire).
According to the newspaper's website, the proposal for the nine months that Berlusconi should pay for socially useful services would have come from the UEPE (External Criminal Execution Office) with "a report already forwarded to the Surveillance Court" of Milan.
Yesterday, meanwhile, the former Knight returned to attack the judiciary and his political opponents: "The left - he said -, making use of its judicial arm, wants to prevent me from leading the electoral campaign".
