Witness links Berlusconi associate to top mobster

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi gestures as he delivers a speech during a tree planting ceremony at the Grove of the Nations in the Jerusalem Forest February 1, 2010.

PALERMO, Sicily (Reuters) - The key witness in a Mafia trial in Sicily told a court Tuesday that a close ally of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi had direct links with the former "Boss of Bosses" of the Cosa Nostra.

Massimo Ciancimino, son of a convicted Mafia associate and former mayor of the Sicilian capital Palermo, told the court that jailed Mafia leader Bernardo Provenzano had "direct links" to Senator Marcello Dell'Utri, a close associate of Berlusconi.

Provenzano was the "Boss of Bosses" of the Sicilian crime syndicate from 1993 until his arrest in 2006 after 43 years on the run.

"Marcello Dell'Utri and Bernardo Provenzano had direct links. My father told me this and he was told by the boss from Corleone," said Ciancimino, referring to the Sicilian town made infamous by Mario Puzo's best-seller "The Godfather," where Provenzano was eventually found and arrested by police in 2006.

Dell'Utri is a long-time business and political associate of the 73-year-old media mogul Berlusconi and is appealing against a nine-year jail sentence for association with the Mafia. The court case late last year threw up allegations by a mob informer of links between Berlusconi, Dell'Utri and the Cosa Nostra.

Berlusconi is not formally linked to the Dell'Utri case and said last year that the mob allegations -- which have not so far led to any fresh investigation involving the premier -- were unfounded and part of a campaign against him by biased courts.

Berlusconi's lawyer Niccolo Ghedini Monday rejected Ciancimino's comments to the court on his first day in the stand, when he said his late father had invested in Berlusconi's construction of a satellite city near Milan called Milan Two.

Ghedini said checks had "demonstrated the completely legal provenance of all the money used" in the 1970s to build the garden city, where Berlusconi launched his television empire.

Ciancimino was giving evidence in the trial of two senior policemen, Mario Mori and Mauro Obinu, accused of helping Provenzano evade an arrest attempt in 1995.

Provenzano was nicknamed "Bini the Tractor" because of the way he mowed down young rivals as a hitman. Ciancimino said he had enjoyed virtual immunity from arrest, partly for helping police nab his even more violent predecessor, Salvatore "The Beast" Riina, in 1993.

(Reporting by Wladimiro Pantaleone; writing by Stephen Brown; editing by Andrew Roche)