I may be sinner but my foes want coup: Berlusconi

Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi on Friday acknowledged he "sometimes is a sinner" but accused magistrates who want him to stand trial over a sex scandal of using Soviet-style spying to oust him in a political coup.
Magistrates want quick trial, judge to decide next week
The embattled prime minister used an interview in Il Foglio, an influential opinion daily, to raise the stakes in his war of nerves with Milan magistrates ahead of a judge's decision next week on whether he should stand trial on charges of paying for sex with a minor and later abusing his power to help her.
"I, sometimes, like everyone, am a sinner but the type of moralistic justice being waged against me is simply scandalous," he said in the interview with Il Foglio's editor Giuliano Ferrara, a former Berlusconi minister.
Prosecutors accuse the prime minister of paying for sex with a night-club dancer when she was under 18, which is against the law in Italy. They also accuse him of abusing the powers of his office by pressuring police to have her released from custody over separate theft allegations.
Their request for an immediate trial, indicating that they believe they have enough evidence to skip a preliminary hearing, adds to the considerable pressure on Berlusconi, who is clinging to power after a split in the ruling PDL party last year.
In his latest broadside against the magistrates, who the prime minister says are politically motivated, Berlusconi said their investigation was "farcical and worthy of the espionage hunting expeditions on other people's lives that were carried out in communist (East) Germany." He said he was the target of those who wanted to carry out a political "coup by moralists".
The prosecutors' request for a trial had hundreds of pages of evidence alleging Berlusconi paid for sex with a "significant number" of young women, including then-17-year-old Moroccan nightclub dancer Karima El Mahroug. The deposition also alleges that he later exerted improper pressure on officials to have El Mahroug, known by her stage name Ruby, released from a Milan police station after she was detained on unrelated theft allegations.
He has acknowledged making a call to police on El Mahroug's behalf, saying he had been told she was Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak's niece. He says he did nothing improper and was only trying to avoid a potential diplomatic embarrassment.
Both Berlusconi and El Mahroug denied that they had sex but she has acknowledged she received 7,000 euros after attending a party with other young women at his villa near Milan. Berlusconi says he has done nothing illegal. There has been little love lost between Italy's magistrates and Berlusconi. The prime minister ratcheted up his attack in the interview, accusing them of using "hobnailed boot justice that sweeps away the rights of the person". Until last month, Berlusconi was protected from prosecution by a law which said that a minister's official duties constituted a "legitimate impediment" to standing trial.