The curious case of Marcello Dell’Utri

When an international arrest warrant was issued for Marcello Dell’Utri on Thursday, he could have been forgiven for not being too worried. The Italian politician – who for the past four decades has allegedly been the link between former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and the Sicilian mafia – had already arrived in Lebanon, a country where he was confident he faced no chance of arrest. Indeed, reports in the Italian media suggest that far from going underground Dell’Utri continued to think he was in the clear – using his mobile phone and credit cards despite knowing they could lead investigators straight to him. So when, on Friday morning, police arrived at his five-star Beirut hotel to arrest him, it must have been something of a shock. How he got his assumptions so wrong appears to be a story that says as much about Lebanon’s politics as it does about Italy’s.