A jailed mafia hitman has linked Silvio Berlusconi to Sicily's Cosa Nostra, telling a Turin court that a clan boss convicted for a spate of deadly bombings boasted of ties to Berlusconi in the early 1990s, just before the Italian prime minister entered politics.

Gaspare Spatuzza, a mob killer turned state witness, said today that boss Giuseppe Graviano told him Berlusconi and his business partner Marcello Dell'Utri had "practically placed the country in our hands".

Spatuzza spoke from behind a hospital screen and a line of police officers in an underground courtroom during an appeal launched by Dell'Utri, now a senator in Berlusconi's Freedom People party, against his nine-year sentence for collaborating with the mafia.

Spatuzza said Graviano met him at a cafe on Rome's Via Veneto in early 1994 where he described Berlusconi and Dell'Utri as "serious people" who had helped the mafia.

Media mogul Berlusconi was elected prime minister later that year. He is not involved in the current trial.

Pressed on what deal had been struck, Spatuzza said he had no information.

A spokesman for Berlusconi said Spatuzza's evidence proved the mafia wanted revenge for the current clampdown on Italy's mafia organisations, which has seen the arrest of 15 of Italy's top 30 most wanted bosses and seizures of assets running to ¤8m a day.

Spatuzza is not "an anti-mafia informant but a real mafioso", said Dell'Utri.

Turning his back on a murderous career in which he reportedly ate a sandwich while stirring a vat of acid containing the bones of a victim, Spatuzza claims he discovered religion after his arrest in 1997. "I was at a crossroads," he said in court, "either God or Cosa Nostra".

Berlusconi reportedly said today that Spatuzza's claims were part of an "absurd trap" against him. "Berlusconi is more afraid of his wife than Spatuzza," said Dell'Utri, referring to Berlusconi's current divorce proceedings.

The prime minister is meanwhile facing two trials after Italy's constitutional court threw out his bid to pass an immunity law.

Berlusconi was due in the dock today for the opening of his trial for bribing British lawyer David Mills, but a judge adjourned proceedings to allow the prime minister to attend a cabinet meeting.

The next hearing is now scheduled for 15 January.

A prosecution source today said that the delay would not increase the risk of the trial being timed out under Italy's statute of limitations as the "clock" would be stopped until the next court date.

Mills has already been sentenced to four and a half years in prison, pending an appeal, for accepting a $600,000 bribe in 1997 to withhold evidence about Berlusconi's business dealings.