ROME (AP) — An appeals court in Palermo, Sicily, acquitted a close associate of former Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi on Thursday of having negotiated with the Mafia during the 1990s. In 2018, a lower court convicted Marcello Dell’Utri, who had been a senator for Berlusconi's right-wing Forza Italia party, of acting as a liaison between Italian state institutions and Cosa Nostra bosses in Sicily and gave him a 12-year prison sentence.