Italy's prosecutors should have regular tests on their mental health, ex-premier Silvio Berlusconi said Tuesday.
Restating a lack of faith in the sanity of the Italian judiciary that that has got him into hot water in the past, Berlusconi told an election rally here that ''the public prosecutor should be periodically subjected to tests that prove his mental health''.
Berlusconi, who delights in provoking perceived persecutors in the judiciary and their alleged allies on the Left, made his remark in a debate on judicial reform.
The centre-right leader, who polls indicate may win back the premiership in a week's time, has vowed to complete reforms which opponents say are aimed at reining in prosecutors.
Among other things, the centre right wants to give ministers discretionary powers over cases, ban wiretaps in corruption probes and slap five-year jail terms on media outlets who publish leaks.
Berlusconi's opponents in the April 13-14 elections were quick to jump on his latest 'mad judge' remark.
Former Clean Hands prosecutor Antonio Di Pietro, an ally of the main centre-left party, said ''only a madman would make a comment like that''.
''I don't understand why he wants to have mental health tests just for prosecutors and not would-be premiers too''.
Di Pietro vowed to fight Berlusconi's reform slate, saying the incident was an example of Berlusconi's conflicts of interest.
Leftwing Senator Cesare Salvi, head of the upper chamber's justice committee, called Berlusconi's statements ''worrying'' and said his reform proposals were aimed at securing ''impunity for the political caste''.
Berlusconi's main rival for the premiership, Democratic Party leader Walter Veltroni, accused Berlusconi of lacking ''a sense of State'' and voiced solidarity with anti-Mafia magistrates.
Berlusconi's first reference to 'mad judges' came halfway through his second term as premier, in September 2003.
In an interview with two British journalists from The Spectator, one of them (Boris Jonston) now running as Tory candidate for mayor of London, he called judges ''mentally disturbed'' people with ''psychiatric problems''.
Berlusconi was quoted as saying that ''judges are mad... to do that job, you have to be mentally disturbed or have psychiatric problems... you have to be anthropologically different from the rest of the human race''.
The comments caused uproard on the centre left and among the judiciary.
Then president Carlo Azeglio Ciampi stepped in to state his belief that the Italian people had ''complete faith in the magistrature as an institution.''
Italian presidents are titular heads of the judiciary's self-governing body, the Supreme Council of Magistrates.
The premier, a billionaire media mogul who has been at the centre of a number of corruption probes, has repeatedly accused magistrates in Milan of targeting him for political reasons.
In his judicial woes, which started soon after he entered politics in 1994, he has never been definitively convicted but some cases collapsed because of legal changes made by his government.
The flamboyant one-time cruise ship entertainer has earned international headlines for a series of gaffes such as saying Mussolini was a benign dictator who sent dissidents to ''holiday camps, stating the ''superiority'' of Western over Muslim civilisation, likening a German Euro-MP to a concentration camp 'kapo' (trusty) and claiming he secured a European food agency by chatting up Finland's female premier.
Before the last general election in 2006, Berlusconi also said Italians would be ''dickheads'' if they voted against their interests and picked the centre left - which they did.
Last year the centre-right leader claimed gays were all ''on the other side'' - in other words, not conservatives.
In the wake of the uproar his comments have caused, Berlusconi has usually claimed he was the victim of media ''misunderstandings'' which were ''exploited'' by his enemies.
