Magistrates have ruled that a cache of banned paparazzo photos taken of guests at Premier Silvio Berlusconi's Sardinian villa should be seized for violating Italy's privacy laws, the premier's lawyer said Wednesday.
The cache comprises some 5,000 photos that Antonello Zappadu took in a three-year period from 2006 to 2009 with a powerful long-range lens.
Zappadu recently said he sold the photos to a Colombian photo agency to avoid their confiscation.
Berlusconi's lawyer, Franco Luigi Satta, admitted that ''if the photos really are in Colombia it will be difficult to carry out the seizure''.
Zappadu was responsible for five photographs published by the Spanish daily El Pais earlier this month showing former Czech prime minister Mirek Topolanek in the nude and topless women in the garden of Berlusconi's Villa Certosa.
The photos were shot by Zappadu in May 2008 when Topolanek and his family were on vacation in Sardinia as Berlusconi's guests.
Berlusconi's lawyers banned their publication in Italy but they were picked up by some newspapers after the El Pais scoop.
Last week Italy's privacy watchdog also accepted an injunction request by Berlusconi's lawyers.
Both Berlusconi and his lawyers have stressed that there is nothing spicy in the photographs.
Zappadu himself said the shots were not compromising but could be ''politically embarrassing'' and allegedly included shots of a 'mock wedding' between the premier and one of his young female guests.
