Death threat to former Italian PM:

Berlusconiphobes. "Berlusconi is target of Islamist death threat,"

ROME: Former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi received an Islamist death threat Friday in a letter containing two bullets that was sent to a newspaper owned by his family's media empire. The blank cartridges were "a forewarning" to Berlusconi and his younger brother Paolo, the publisher of Il Giornale, for the Milanese newspaper's "anti-Islamic" stance, according to the paper's Web site, which published the letter. The letter warned that "at the first favorable moment" the Berlusconi brothers would come to the same end as Benazir Bhutto, the Pakistani opposition leader, who was assassinated Dec. 27. "We will do like they did in Pakistan, with Bhutto: a shot to the head with real bullets and then an Italian-style suicide bomber to make sure that they depart this world," the letter read. "Bodyguards and security details will be unable to stop us, because we are unpredictable," said the letter. In September 2001, when Berlusconi was prime minister, he inflamed the Muslim world and angered Western diplomats by stating that Western civilization was "superior" to that of Islam. A spokesman for the police in Milan said its anti-terrorist squad was examining the letter. Prosecutors in Milan will also investigate the incident.

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