WHAT PRICE FREEDOM? by Philip Willan from "The Guardian" Adriano Sofri occupies a unique position in Italian society. A former leader of the hard-left Lotta Continua (Continuous Struggle) organisation, he is now a respected political columnist, disseminating his influential opinions through some of Italy's most prestigious newspapers. Today La Repubblica published his lengthy examination of the pacifists' dilemma over the crisis in Iraq. But all this analysis is conducted from a prison cell, where Mr Sofri is serving a 22-year sentence for the murder of a senior Milan police officer. The eight trials into the allegation that Mr Sofri had ordered the 1972 assassination of police commissioner Luigi Calabresi, a crime of which he has always declared himself innocent, have profoundly divided Italian public opinion. Now those divisions have been exacerbated by the latest appeal for his release, which came last week and from no less a person than the prime minister. Silvio Berlusconi said the time was ripe for Mr Sofri to be pardoned, observing in a letter to Mr Berlusconi's wife's newspaper Il Foglio that society had nothing to gain from the continued incarceration of the leftwing intellectual. Many opposition supporters initially welcomed the prime minister's humanitarian appeal, but its timing has given rise to the suspicion that the initiative may not be the product of altruism alone. It came just three days after parliament approved the law allowing defendants to apply to have their trial moved if they have a "legitimate suspicion" that the judges may be prejudiced against them. The law is seen as just the latest in a series of legal measures intended to protect Mr Berlusconi from the magistrates in Milan, whom he accuses of being politically biased against him. The Sofri case has also generated much controversy, and Mr Berlusconi's call for the writer's release aligns him with those defenders of human rights and critics of a "partial and incompetent" justice system who were most exercised by Mr Sofri's plight. In an article published by the leftwing daily L'Unità, the philosopher Gianni Vattimo urged Mr Sofri to refuse any act of pardon emanating from such a tainted source, just as he has refused, on principle, to apply for a pardon to the president of the republic. Such an application is seen as implicitly recognising guilt. "If you have borne an unjust imprisonment for years ... I ask you to continue to resist, because now, more than ever, it is worth it," Mr Vattimo wrote. It was almost, he said, Mr Sofri's "imperative duty". The article did not go down well with Mr Sofri's brother, Gianni, a history professor who said he would now be breaking a 40-year habit of buying L'Unità every day. He said Mr Vattimo's advice, sent from a Turin drawing room to someone who had spent the last six years in a prison cell, denoted an absence of lucidity as well as of common humanity. "We all have enough strength to bear the ills of other people," he wrote, citing La Rochefoucauld, in an indignant letter to the paper. The editor of L'Unità responded to the paper's critics by likening the situation in the Italian media to that of a would-be suicide's kitchen, the doors and windows sealed with tape to prevent the gas from escaping. "Here there is not even a crack to let the air in if even the friends and family of Adriano Sofri choose Vattimo as the enemy and Berlusconi as their friend," he wrote. The controversy comes at a time when justice and the prison system are at the forefront of the political debate. The justice minister, Roberto Castelli, has warned that the prisons are close to collapse because of overcrowding and lack of staff. One possible solution could be an amnesty for prisoners convicted of lesser crimes, a course that may be recommended by Pope John Paul when he addresses parliament for the first time on Thursday. The release of Mr Sofri, or a wider amnesty, is likely to be opposed by Mr Berlusconi's more conservative government allies, while his opponents are alarmed by what they see as an attempt by the prime minister to encroach on the prerogatives of the head of state. That concern is all the more acute because Mr Berlusconi said recently he would be happy to become president - provided the office was invested with some real power.