The death of former Italian prime minister and Socialist Party (PSI) leader Bettino Craxi dominated the front pages of Thursday's Italian press.

Milan's Corriere della Sera reported the strong reaction of Craxi's daughter Stefania who said: "He was murdered by all those who accused him of stealing, by those who gave ammunition to those prosecutors, by all those who then disappeared."

However, the paper's editorial remembered Craxi's tendency to appear like a bully, saying he had a "strong and dark tendency to consider as enemies all those who did not submit to being his servants.

"More than bold the man seemed reckless, more than efficient he was cumbersome, more than authoritative he was insolent.

"After Mussolini, we Italians have learned to be wary of street bullies and even if he was not one, Craxi came across as one," it said.

'Craxi's socialism robbed poor'

La Repubblica published an editorial by Giorgio Bocca, a long-time socialist and adversary of Craxi, who said Craxi backed a form of socialism within the Italian Socialist Party (PSI) which robbed the poor.

"One has to admit that Bettino Craxi was truly a man of transition, who waded across the waters from where the politics of feelings and utopia ended and that of money and organisation, alas funded by kickbacks, began.

"There were the non-communist liberal-socialists who thought they were renovating the best social and democratic aspects of the traditional party, then there were the new bureaucrats, tired of being poor and ready to exploit all the advantages governing could offer, without any concern over the mortal risks that in the end blew apart the party of kickbacks.

"For two years those two souls of the PSI lived together, the one interested in values and the one interested in money. But the internal tug-of-war, month by month, got stronger until it became clear that one either joined Craxi or they were out.

"Socialism had been transformed into something that robbed poor old and sick people."

Fleeing Italy a mistake?

The Rome conservative daily, Il Tempo, criticised Craxi for fleeing Italy.

"His strong personality and his view of being a victim led him to leave Italy ... This was his biggest mistake and he made a lot of mistakes. Had he gone and faced the judges everything would have turned out different," it said.

However, the left-wing L'Unita said more could have been done to allow Craxi to return and receive treatment for his various illnesses in Italy.

"There were too many people close to Craxi who linked his return to a kind of self-criticism by the Italian state," it said.

"Craxi was a top-level politician ... He was a man who divided the country, he had the intuition to begin modernisation but also encouraged all of Italy's defects in the 1980s by using public debt as a form of government which thwarted ambitions for reform and modernisation."

The hard-Left Il Manifesto said Craxi's legacy still remained despite his death. "We won't forget him", it said.

"He died a fugitive in Hammamet but his era did not end when he and his party were overrun by the kickbacks scandal, it does not end today with his death."

BBC Monitoring (http://www.monitor.bbc.co.uk), based in Caversham in southern England, selects and translates information from radio, television, press, news agencies and the Internet from 150 countries in more than 70 languages.