Italian protest at trial move law

ROME, Italy -- Tens of thousands of people are gathering in the Italian capital to protest against what they say is a new law aimed at protecting Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.

The new law would give defendants the right to ask for a trial to be moved or to be restarted if they could show a "legitimate suspicion" the judges were biased.

But as politicians debated the law inside Italy's lower house on Saturday a huge protest outside argued the law was designed to help Berlusconi avoid a trial on charges of bribing judges.

Film director anni Moretti, winner of the Palme d'Or at the Cannes film festival two years ago, led the demonstration in Rome's Piazza San Giovanni.

"The Italians who voted for Berlusconi were following a dream -- and they woke up in a nightmare," Moretti told the packed square.

"Berlusconi thinks that this demonstration is unsuitable, and it makes him laugh ... I ask him, What is he laughing about?" Moretti said, setting off a roar from the crowd.

The bill was proposed by a Berlusconi ally and approved in the upper house in July only after a heated debate in which many opposition figures refused to vote.

Berlusconi supporters say the law will give all Italians the right to a fair trial and say it is in no way designed to help the billionaire conservative prime minister.

Berlusconi, 65, and his former defence minister Cesare Previti, are due to go on trial later this year in Milan on charges of bribing judges in the mid-1980s to win control of SME, a food company.

They both deny the charges and say judges in the northern Italian city are running a politically motivated vendetta against them.