Italy Interior Minister Set to Quit Over Jail Decree

Italy’s Interior Minister Roberto Maroni said Saturday that he is ready to resign over a decree backed by Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi that lifts the threat of jail from corruption suspects.

Maroni, a member of the federalist Northern League, told Italian television he had asked his party to decide by today whether he should stay at his post and called for the decree to be scrapped in its entirety, rather than amended.

“I am ready to resign my mandate on Monday,” Maroni said.

His statement turned a political storm over the decree into a full-blown crisis for Berlusconi’s 2-month-old coalition government, swept to power on a wave of public disgust with corruption in politics.

The League, which built its reputation on fighting graft, is the biggest party in Parliament and ensures Berlusconi’s three-party coalition its majority.

Maroni made his threat just hours after Berlusconi said he was backing the decree to the hilt and would amend it only to make it harder for magistrates to hold suspects in preventive detention.

Rejecting talk of a whitewash for corrupt politicians as a “despicable lie,” the media tycoon said in a statement:

“I may be courting unpopularity, but I will do everything in my power to empty the prisons of everyone held there against the universal principles of human rights.

“No citizen should be imprisoned without first being convicted. In Italy, in the Second Republic, justice must return to being a model of civility.”

Four leading members of Milan’s elite pool of “Clean Hands” magistrates spearheading the assault on graft told their superiors Saturday that they are resigning their high-profile posts.

The measure, which Berlusconi says was approved unanimously by his Cabinet, was issued Wednesday and removes corruption, bribery and a string of other crimes from a list of offenses for which suspects can be held in preventive detention in jail.

Maroni said the published text differed from a draft he had approved and insisted that he had received assurances that corruption suspects would not be freed.