Silvio Berlusconi, 86, leaves hospital after six weeks


Former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, 86, left the Milan hospital on Friday where he was admitted six weeks ago for leukemia and a lung infection, an AFP photographer noted.

Silvio Berlusconi rushed into a sedan with tinted windows which left around 1:15 p.m. (11:15 a.m. GMT) the San Raffaele hospital in the Lombard capital where he had entered on April 5. He had been admitted to this prestigious establishment to treat a state of weakness linked to a lung infection but his doctors had revealed that he suffered from chronic leukaemia.

Hospitalized several times in recent years

He had addressed his supporters for the first time in early May, in a video message, from his hospital room, seated behind a desk with the party banner and the Italian flag behind him. Silvio Berlusconi has been hospitalized several times in recent years, in particular after contracting Covid-19 in 2020. The journey of this eternal ghost, whose political death was wrongly announced many times, merges with the Italian history of the thirty last years.

Prime minister three times between 1994 and 2011, he is currently a senator and president of his right-wing party, Forza Italia, a minor partner in the coalition government of far-right Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni.

Ms Meloni had visited him in hospital on Sunday, saying he was in “excellent spirits” and continued to work “tirelessly”. Forza Italia’s number two, Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani, and his coalition ally Matteo Salvini, leader of the anti-immigration League party, also paid him a visit. “Welcome home, great Silvio,” said tweeted Matteo Salvini on Friday. “We are all happy to have you back home, welcome president,” Tajani also wrote.

A career marked by scandals

Football fan Silvio Berlusconi chaired AC Milan for 31 years, which won the Champions League five times under his era, before selling in April 2017 to Chinese investors. He is the current owner of the Monza club.

His career has also been marred by scandals and legal issues, which over the past decade have focused on proceedings related to his infamous “Bunga Bunga” sex parties.

The octogenarian, whose partner Marta Fascina is 54 years his junior, caused a scandal again in December 2022 by promising his players before a match to bring a “bus of whores” “into the locker room” in the event of victory.



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