Imane Fadil
Italian
magistrates said on Friday they had opened an investigation into
possible murder after the mysterious death of a Moroccan model who was a
regular guest at former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi’s “bunga
bunga” parties.
Imane Fadil
(33) died on March 1st a month after being admitted to a Milan hospital
with severe stomach pains. At the time she told friends and her lawyer
that she had been poisoned.
Her death was only reported on Friday.
“The doctors have not identified with any certainty any pathology which can explain the death,” Milan chief prosecutor Francesco Greco told Reuters, adding that there were “several anomalies” in Ms Fadil’s medical records.
Ms Fadil testified at the 2012 trial of Mr Berlusconi, who was accused of paying for sex with an underage prostitute.
She told the court
one of the parties at the media magnate’s home involved young women,
sometimes in pairs, wearing nuns’ costumes and stripping off while
performing raunchy pole dances.
“They started to
dance like the nuns of the film Sister Act, and then they took off their
clothes,” she said. At another party, a woman in her underwear stripped
for Mr Berlusconi wearing a mask with the face of footballer
Ronaldinho, she said.
Mr Berlusconi was
initially convicted in the case but ultimately acquitted after a judge
ruled he could not have known the underage prostitute was in fact a
minor.
However,
magistrates subsequently laid new charges against Mr Berlusconi and
other defendants, accusing them of bribing some of the women who
attended the parties to keep them from telling the truth at the initial
trial.
They have denied the accusations.
Ms Fadil was never
accused of taking bribes. Italian newspapers reported that she was
writing a book about her experiences and that the magistrates had
obtained a copy of the manuscript following her death. – Reuters
