Italy: Berlusconi Given 12-Month Prison Sentence

Former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi has been sentenced to a year in prison over the publication of leaked transcripts from a police wiretap in one of his newspapers.

Mr Berlusconi, who faces two more verdicts this month for tax fraud and having sex with an underage prostitute, can appeal the conviction and so doing suspend the sentence under Italian law.

Italian sentencing guidelines indicate that people aged over 75 and with sentences of less than two years do not have to actually go to prison.

Mr Berlusconi, a billionaire media tycoon, is 76.

He stood accused of violating secrecy laws after his Il Giornale daily published transcripts in 2005 that were widely seen as an attempt to discredit a senior member of the centre-left Democratic Party ahead of elections in 2006.

The leaks were about the attempted takeover of BNL bank by insurance giant Unipol.

Mr Berlusconi's brother Paolo, editor of Il Giornale, was sentenced to two years and three months.