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16th Mar 2019

Model in Berlusconi’s bunga-bunga trial killed by ‘radioactive poisoning’

Kyle Picknell

She was a regular guest at former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi’s sex parties

A Moroccan-born model who attended the infamous bunga-bunga dinners of former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi has died in hospital, allegedly killed by radioactive poisoning.

Imane Fadil, 33, died in a Milan hospital on March 1, a month after being admitted with stomach pains. News agency ANSA reported that a toxicology test had found that she had been killed by a “mix of radioactive substances”.

Before her death, the model told both her brother and her lawyer that she had been poisoned and magistrates said that she possessed symptoms seen in poisoning victims.

Fadil testified at the 2012 trial of Berlusconi, who was accused of paying for sex with an underage prostitute and was scheduled to give evidence again against Berlusconi over accusations that he offered to buy silence from women who attended his parties and paid other guests to reaffirm that his dinners were innocent. 

In 2013 he was convicted of paying for sex with an under-age guest, dancer Karima el-Mahroug, also Moroccan-born, in 2010. He was acquitted after appeal a year later.

Despite this Milan chief prosecutor Francesco Greco said there were “several anomalies” in Fadil’s medical records. “The doctors have not identified with any certainty any pathology which can explain the death,” he said.

The model was also writing a book about her experiences at the parties with Berlusconi and magistrates investigating her death have obtained a copy of the manuscript, according to Italian newspapers.