Anger as Berlusconi’s TV channel films critical judge

Silvio Berlusconi has been accused of harassment after a TV channel he owns secretly filmed a judge who recently fined his holding company Fininvest. Italy's association of magistrates has reported the matter to the country's privacy watchdog.

Canale 5, part of Berlusconi's television company Mediaset, broadcast footage of Judge Raimondo Mesiano going to the barber's for a shave and standing outside the shop smoking.

An accompanying voiceover calls Mesiano "extravagant" and his behaviour "eccentric". The judge's turquoise socks are ridiculed and he is accused of smoking his "umpteenth" cigarette. "He can only relax at the barber's," the voiceover says.

The footage was filmed following Mesiano's October 5 decision to order Fininvest to pay €750m to a rival company. The prime minister was found "co-responsible" for the bribery of a judge during an earlier takeover deal. Mesiano was later promoted, a move which is likely to have contributed to the decision to film him.

In La Stampa, Michele Brambilla, a senator of the opposition Democratic party wrote: "The worst thing - the thing that really gives you the shivers - is the shadowing, the spying, the violation of privacy, the public ridicule, with the implied warning: look out, we're watching you."

Brambilla's leader, Dario Franceschini, said on Twitter that he was wearing turquoise socks in solidarity with Mesiano.

But it isn't just his opponents who are laying into Berlusconi. The Independent quotes a Mediaset writer as saying, "This is the most disgraceful, pathetic and witless thing I've ever seen."

Mediaset defended the broadcast, saying Mesiano had "acquired national and international notoriety". Mauro Crippa, the company's head of news, said: "We don't accept lectures from those who have routinely used spying as a journalistic method."

Berlusconi has suffered months of bad publicity following the publication of paparazzi photographs of naked women enjoying the prime minister's hospitality at his villa in Sardinia, and of claims by call-girls that he has enjoyed their services.