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104-584: The Commission is not the supreme command of the Sicilian Mafia. "Contrary to the wide-spread image presented by the media, these superordinate bodies of coordination cannot be compared with the executive boards of major legal firms. Their power is intentionally limited [and] it would be entirely wrong to see in the Cosa Nostra a centrally managed, internationally active Mafia holding company," according to criminologist Letizia Paoli . The jurisdiction extends over

208-448: A culvert under the highway between Palermo International Airport and the city of Palermo , near the town of Capaci . Brusca's men carried out test drives, using flashbulbs to simulate detonating the blast on a speeding car, and a concrete structure was specially created and destroyed in an experimental explosion to see if the bomb would be powerful enough. Leoluca Bagarella assisted at the scene during preparations. Brusca detonated

312-563: A naval career but his father thought him too independent-minded for the armed forces, and sent him to study law. After graduating in 1961, Falcone began to practice law before being appointed a judge in 1964. Falcone eventually gravitated toward penal law after serving as a district magistrate. He was assigned to the prosecutor's office in Trapani and Marsala , and then in 1978 to the bankruptcy court in Palermo. In early 1980, Falcone joined

416-864: A coveted "summa cum laude" citation, was supervised by Prof. Bernhard Giesen  [ de ] . She crossed the Alps and worked as an academic research assistant at the Tübingen University Institute for Criminology and at the Giessen University Institute for Sociology during 1996/97. From 1998 till 2006 she led a Research Group at the Max Planck Institute for Foreign and International Criminal Law in Freiburg i.B. In 2006 she switched to Leuven/Louvain University , half an hour to

520-499: A fact that leaked out of the office and eventually cost him his life: he was murdered on 6 August 1980, on the orders of Inzerillo. Falcone was given bodyguards the next day. In this tense atmosphere, Falcone introduced an innovative investigative technique in the Spatola investigation, seizing bank records to follow "the money trail" created by heroin deals to build his case, applying the skills he had learned unravelling bankruptcies. He

624-434: A group of investigating magistrates who closely worked together sharing information and developing new investigative and prosecutorial strategies. Most important, they assumed collective responsibility for carrying Mafia prosecutions forward: all the members of the pool signed prosecutorial orders to avoid exposing any one of them to particular risk, such as the one that had cost judge Gaetano Costa his life. Along with Falcone,

728-515: A leaked report of the intelligence service SISDE. Riina and Bagarella felt betrayed by political allies in Rome, who had promised to help pass laws to ease prison conditions and reduce sentences for its jailed members in exchange for Mafia support at the polls. The SISDE report says they believed that hits on either of the two embattled members of Berlusconi's Forza Italia party — each under separate criminal indictments — would have been less likely to provoke

832-615: A lower-level Mafioso – revealed the existence of the Commission, but his revelations were discarded at the time and Vitale judged insane. The existence of the Commission was first established by a court of law during the Maxi Trial in 1986–87. The groundwork for the Maxi Trial was done at the preliminary investigative phase by Palermo's Antimafia Pool , created by judge Rocco Chinnici in which

936-506: A major presence in his childhood. As boys, Falcone and Borsellino, who were born in the same neighbourhood, played soccer together on the Piazza Magione. Both had classmates who ended up as mafiosi. Falcone grew up at a time when Sicilians did not acknowledge the existence of the Mafia as a coherent organised group; assertions to the contrary by other Italians were often seen as 'attacks from

1040-523: A part-completed report on doping in the German football league was released by another commission member, Andreas Singler, indicating that the departure of Franke had not put an end to disagreements among its remaining members. One unexpected by-product of the commission's investigation involved Hans-Hermann Dickhuth whose 1983 habilitation (academic qualification) had been based on a dissertation that allegedly contained extensive word-for-word quotations from

1144-583: A police officer – when Provenzano entered the cell block. The pentito Antonino Giuffrè has said in October 2005 that there had been rumours within Cosa Nostra that Provenzano was an informer for the Carabinieri while he was on the run. After the arrest of Bernardo Provenzano on April 11, 2006 – on the same day as Romano Prodi 's victory in the 2006 Italian general election against Silvio Berlusconi – several mafiosi were mentioned as Provenzano's successor. Among

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1248-457: A province; each province of Sicily has some kind of a Commission, except Messina, Siracusa and Ragusa. Initially the idea was that the family bosses would not sit on the Commission, but in order to prevent imbalances of power some other prominent member would be appointed instead. However, that rule was not obeyed from the start. According to the pentito Tommaso Buscetta , the Commission first came into being "to settle disputes between members of

1352-722: A purely formal value … the decisions were taken before … and the Commission was nothing but the faithful executor of orders." Meanwhile, new mandamenti were formed in 1983, whose members entered the Commission: Raffaele Ganci for the Noce mandamento, Giuseppe Giacomo Gambino for the San Lorenzo mandamento, Matteo Motisi for the Pagliarelli mandamento and Salvatore Buscemi for the Passo di Ragano-Boccadifalco mandamento. In 1986-87

1456-478: A rift within Cosa Nostra became clear. On the one hand there were the hardline "Corleonesi" in jail – led by Totò Riina and Leoluca Bagarella – and on the other the more moderate "Palermitani" – led by Provenzano and Antonino Giuffrè , Salvatore Lo Piccolo and Matteo Messina Denaro . Apparently the arrest of Giuffrè in April 2002 was made possible by an anonymous phone call that seems to have been made by loyalists to

1560-409: A sack filled with dynamite sticks was discovered near a beach house Falcone had rented in the town of Addaura by policeman Nino Agostino. Although Falcone had been threatened before, this failed attempt bothered him to the extreme because it had all the signs of an inside job. At the time, he was meeting Swiss prosecutors Carla Del Ponte and Claudio Lehman from Lugano who were helping to investigate

1664-471: A series of revenge killings because of the Supreme Court sentence. The Mafia had counted on the politicians Salvo Lima and Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti to appoint Corrado Carnevale to review the sentence. Carnevale had overturned many Mafia convictions on the slenderest of technicalities previously. Carnevale, however, had to withdraw due to pressure from the public and from Giovanni Falcone – who at

1768-651: A soldier of Giuseppe Di Cristina 's family on the other end of Sicily, in Riesi. The crackdown on the Mafia resulted in a period of relative peace – a " pax mafiosa " – while many mafiosi were held in jail or were banished internally. The verdict of the Trial of the 114 against the Mafia in Catanzaro in December 1968 resulted in many acquittals or short sentences for criminal association. The vast majority of mafiosi had to be released given

1872-429: A way that the suspicion fell on their rivals in the Commission. In 1979, Pino Greco from Ciaculli also known as Scarpuzzedda and Riina's favourite hit man entered the Commission as well. Instead of avoiding conflict, the Commission increasingly became an instrument in the unfolding power struggle that eventually led to the quasi-dictatorship of Totò Riina . Members of the Commission were no longer freely selected by

1976-528: Is a criminologist , originally from Prato . Since 2006 she has been a professor of the Law Faculty at Leuven/Louvain University . She served, between 2009 and 2016, as chair of the sometimes troubled "Freiburg Sports Medicine Commission" at Freiburg University . Paoli holds dual German-Italian nationality and lives in Belgium. She has published extensively, notably on international drugs trading. Paoli

2080-504: The Fronte Universitario d'Azione Nazionale  [ it ] (FUAN), a right-wing university organisation affiliated with the neo-fascist MSI ( Movimento Sociale Italiano ). However, neither ever joined a political party, and although the ideologies of their political movements were diametrically opposed, they shared a history of opposing the Mafia. Their different political leanings did not thwart their friendship. Falcone wanted

2184-518: The Bagheria mandamento, were or became members as well.) During these years, tensions between different coalitions within the Commission increased. In this period, the Commission was increasingly dominated by the coalition led by Totò Riina and Bernardo Provenzano that was opposed by Gaetano Badalamenti and Stefano Bontade . Riina and Provenzano secretly formed an alliance of mafiosi in different families, cutting across clan divisions, in defiance of

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2288-467: The Carabinieri of May 28, 1963, where a confidential informant revealed the existence of a commission composed of fifteen persons – six from Palermo city and the rest from towns in the province – "each with the rank of boss of either a group or a Mafia family." Judge Terranova did not believe that the existence of a commission meant that the Mafia was a tightly unified structure. In 1973, Leonardo Vitale –

2392-474: The pentito Leonardo Messina , the Regional Commission in 1992 was made up by Salvatore Riina for the province of Palermo, Nitto Santapaola for the province of Catania, Salvatore Saitta for the province of Enna, Giuseppe "Piddu" Madonia for the province of Caltanissetta, Antonio Ferro for the province of Agrigento and Mariano Agate for the province of Trapani. According to Tommaso Buscetta ,

2496-489: The pentito Salvatore Cancemi . Thousands gathered at the Church of Saint Dominic for the funerals which were broadcast live on national TV. All regular television programs were suspended. Parliament declared a day of mourning. His colleague Paolo Borsellino was killed in another bombing 57 days later, along with five police officers: Agostino Catalano, Walter Cosina, Emanuela Loi, Vincenzo Li Muli, and Claudio Traina. In

2600-590: The 13 November 2006 issue of Time . Falcone was born in 1939 to a middle-class family in the Via Castrofilippo near the seaport district La Kalsa , a neighbourhood of central Palermo that suffered extensive destruction by aerial attacks during the Allied invasion of Sicily in 1943. His father, Arturo Falcone, the director of a provincial chemical laboratory, was married to Luisa Bentivegna. Giovanni had two older sisters, Anna and Maria. Falcone's parents emphasised

2704-526: The 1930s, in an effort to reduce infighting within the organization. The meeting came at the tail end of a violent Mafia war in Palermo over the fruit and vegetable wholesale market that was moved from the Zisa area to Acquasanta near the port in January 1955, disturbing the delicate power balances within Cosa Nostra. The Sicilians agreed with their suggestion and Buscetta, Gaetano Badalamenti and Salvatore Greco set

2808-812: The 1970s, while the pentito Antonino Calderone claims that there had been a rappresentante regionale in the 1950s even before the Commissions and the capi mandamento were created. The rappresentante regionale in those days was a certain Andrea Fazio from Trapani. The Interprovincional or Regional Commission was probably set up in February 1975 on the instigation of Giuseppe Calderone from Catania who became its first "secretary". The other members were Gaetano Badalamenti for Palermo, Giuseppe Settecasi (Agrigento), Cola Buccellato (Trapani), Angelo Mongiovì (Enna) and Giuseppe Di Cristina (Caltanissetta). According to

2912-533: The Buscetta theorem. That vision of Cosa Nostra was not immediately recognized. Other magistrates, in particular Corrado Carnevale – also known as the Sentence Killer – of the Supreme Court (Corte di Cassazione), sustained that Mafia associations are autonomous groups, not connected amongst themselves, and therefore, the collective responsibility for the Commission members did not exist. Carnevale's view prevailed at

3016-484: The Commission that decided to kill the politician and Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti ’s right-hand man on Sicily Salvo Lima and the judges Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino was composed of: Provenzano proposed a new less violent Mafia strategy instead of the terrorist bombing campaign in 1993 against the state to get them to back off in their crackdown against the Mafia after the murders of anti-mafia prosecutors Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino . Following

3120-477: The Commission's competencies were often disregarded due to its collegial character and the wide autonomy for the family bosses. Only when Totò Riina , Bernardo Provenzano and the Corleonesi imposed their rule, the Commission became a central leadership body. The Commission in fact lost its autonomy and became a mere enforcement body that endorsed the decisions made by Riina and Provenzano. According to Buscetta,

3224-406: The Commission. That rule was, however, not applied universally due to the opposition of some family-bosses who threatened to abandon the project from the start. The Commission had two main competencies. The first was to settle conflicts among Mafia families and single members, and to enforce the most serious violations of the normative codes of Cosa Nostra. Second, the Commission was entrusted with

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3328-592: The Interprovincial Commission - the Corleonesi coalition was able to increase its power within the Commission. Their rivals were overwhelmed and lost any power to strike back. Beside using violence, the Corleonesi also imposed their supremacy by shrewdly exploiting a competence of the Commission: the power to suspend leaders of a family and to name a reggente , a temporary boss. In 1978, Gaetano Badalamenti

3432-593: The Italian Carabinieri , to Sicily with orders to crush the Mafia. However, not long after arriving, on 3 September 1982, the General was gunned down in the city centre, his young wife by his side. Sicilians rose up in outrage. Outside the church, the politicians who attended were jeered and spat on, and blamed by Sicilians for tolerating the Mafia for so long. In response, the Italian government finally offered investigators

3536-468: The Italian Parliament, with the support of Forza Italia , subsequently prolonged the enforcement of 41 bis, which was to expire in 2002, for another four years and extended it to other crimes such as terrorism. However, according to one of Italy's leading magazines, L’Espresso , 119 mafiosi – one-fifth of those incarcerated under the 41-bis regime – have been released on an individual basis. In 2002

3640-514: The Mafia had a strong presence, both men fought against organised crime as prosecuting magistrates. They were both killed in 1992, a few weeks apart. In recognition of their tireless effort and sacrifice during the anti-mafia trials, they were both awarded the Gold Medal for Civil Valor and were acknowledged as martyrs of the Catholic Church . They were also named as heroes of the last 60 years in

3744-514: The Mafia hardliners Riina and Bagarella. The purpose was to send a message to Provenzano. The incarcerated bosses wanted something to be done about the harsh prison conditions (in particular the relaxation of the 41-bis incarceration regime) – and were believed to be orchestrating a return to violence while serving multiple life sentences. Targets were to have been Marcello Dell'Utri and former Defence Minister Cesare Previti , both close advisors of then Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi , according to

3848-579: The Mafia's financial holdings in Switzerland. Falcone believed that the assassination attempt not only involved the Mafia but some people in government as well. During the investigations into the money laundering networks of the Mafia, it became clear that former Palermo police chief Bruno Contrada , who had moved to the intelligence service SISDE , had warned a suspect about his impending arrest so that he could escape in time. Falcone received an effusive congratulatory phone call from Giulio Andreotti after

3952-678: The Mafia, a boss has to be one step above the others otherwise it all falls apart. It all depends on if he can manage consensus and if the others agree or rebel." Provenzano "guaranteed a measure of stability because he had the authority to quash internal disputes." Among the members of the directorate were Salvatore Lo Piccolo ; Antonino Giuffrè from Caccamo ; Benedetto Spera from Belmonte Mezzagno; Salvatore Rinella from Trabia ; Giuseppe Balsano from Monreale ; Matteo Messina Denaro from Castelvetrano ; Vincenzo Virga from Trapani ; and Andrea Manciaracina from Mazara del Vallo . Letizia Paoli Letizia Paoli (born 24 October 1966)

4056-433: The Maxi Trial to walk free from prison. The Martelli decree led to the immediate re-arrest of the Mafia bosses. While in Rome he started to restructure the Italian prosecution system, creating district offices to fight the Mafia and a national office to fight organised crime. Next was his move to prevent Carnevale from reviewing the sentence of the Maxi Trial. In a blow to the Mafia, the Maxi Trial convictions were upheld by

4160-497: The Santa Maria di Gesù mandamento (the former fiefdom of Stefano Bontade ) was reinstated, represented by Pietro Aglieri . Since the arrests as a result of the revelations of pentiti such as Tommaso Buscetta , Salvatore Contorno , Francesco Marino Mannoia and Antonino Calderone , and the Maxi Trial in the 1980s many Commission members ended up in jail. They were substituted by a so-called sostituto or reggente . In 1992

4264-417: The Supreme Court in January 1992. To the surprise of many, Falcone's move to Rome was very successful. He achieved a genuine revolution in the judiciary. The Mafia began to realize that Falcone was even more dangerous in Rome than he had been in Palermo. The Maxi trial sentences being upheld by the Supreme Court were a blow to the Mafia's prestige. The council of top bosses headed by Riina reacted by ordering

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4368-459: The United States". Falcone was plagued by a chronic lack of resources in his capacity as magistrate. A law to create a new offence of Mafia conspiracy and to confiscate Mafia assets was introduced by Pio La Torre , but it had been stalled in parliament for two years before La Torre was murdered on 30 April 1982. In May 1982, the Italian government sent Carlo Alberto Dalla Chiesa , a general of

4472-468: The affair lacked the necessary transparency, and in the very public disagreement between Paoli and the university authorities which ensued it was reported, towards the end of 2014, that she had threatened to resign the commission chairmanship. By this time publication of the commission's final report was believed to have been scheduled for Autumn/Fall 2015. However, Autumn/Fall 2015 came and went: in March 2016

4576-463: The appeal of the Maxi Trial , but at the theorem was confirmed upheld by the final sentence of the Supreme Court in January 1992. (Carnevale did not preside the court that did the ruling.) In the meantime, the Antimafia Pool of Palermo was dismantled and judge Rocco Chinnici had been murdered in 1983. Many Mafia bosses were condemned to life in prison and Cosa Nostra reacted furiously and started

4680-535: The assassination of Salvatore Lima (on the grounds that he was an ally of Giulio Andreotti ), and Falcone. Lima was shot dead on 12 March 1992. Giovanni Brusca was tasked with killing Falcone. Riina wanted the murder carried out in Sicily in a demonstration of Mafia power; he instructed that the attack should be on Highway A29 , which Falcone had to use to get from the airport to his home on his weekly visits. Four hundred kilograms (881 lbs.) of explosives were placed in

4784-400: The backing they needed, and Pio La Torre 's law was passed 10 days later. Falcone's responsibilities as a magistrate put tremendous strain on his personal life. In May 1986, he married his fiancée, Francesca Morvillo ; Falcone had Mayor Leoluca Orlando himself conduct the private ceremony. He became part of Palermo's informal Antimafia Pool , created by Judge Rocco Chinnici . This was

4888-716: The chemists of the French Connection had moved clandestine labs for refining heroin from Marseille to Sicily. At the end of 1980, he visited the United States and started to work with the U.S. Justice Department , resulting in "some of the biggest international law enforcement operations in history", such as the Pizza Connection . The inquiries extended to Turkey, an important stopover on the route of morphine base; to Switzerland, where bank secrecy laws facilitated money laundering ; and to Naples, where cigarette smuggling rings were being reconfigured as heroin operations. At

4992-519: The commission faced obstructive actions from vested interests and that Letizia Paoli herself was subjected to aggressively hostile whispering attacks. Her own approach became more robust and uncompromising over time, but after more than seven years, by the start of 2017 it had become apparent that the commission had failed to conclude its task timely and satisfactorily. As commission chair, Paoli called upon Werner Franke to resign his membership of it, following leak allegations. However, in March 2015

5096-419: The device by remote control from a small outbuilding on a hill to the right of the highway on 23 May 1992. Giovanni Falcone, his wife Francesca Morvillo and police officers Rocco Dicillo, Antonio Montinaro and Vito Schifani were killed in the blast. The explosion was so powerful that it registered on local earthquake monitors. Riina reportedly threw a party, toasting Falcone's death with champagne , according to

5200-506: The dictatorship of the Corleonesi. According to Brusca, Provenzano "sold" Riina in exchange for the valuable archive of compromising material that Riina held in his apartment in Via Bernini 52 in Palermo. The Sicilian Mafia had been divided between those bosses who support a hard line against the Italian state – mainly bosses who are in prison such as Salvatore 'Totò' Riina (deceased since 2017) and Leoluca Bagarella – and those who support

5304-539: The dispute, the Commission became part of the internal conflict. On June 30, 1963, a car bomb exploded near Greco's house in Ciaculli, killing seven police and military officers sent to defuse it after an anonymous phone call. The outrage over the Ciaculli massacre changed the Mafia war into a war against the Mafia. It prompted the first concerted anti-mafia efforts by the state in post-war Italy. The Sicilian Mafia Commission

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5408-418: The doctoral dissertation of one of his own students. The potential news value of an otherwise mainstream plagiarism scandal was enhanced by the fact that the student in question subsequently became Dickhuth's wife. As commission chair, Paoli reported the commission's assessment of the matter to the university rectorate. The matter was then leaked to the press. Some felt that the university's handling of

5512-602: The east of Brussels , taking up a full professorship in Criminology . At the end of 2009, Letizia Paoli was appointed to chair the independent expert commission of enquiry mandated to evaluate activities of the department of rehabilitative and sports medicine at the Freiburg University Medical Center . She took over the role from Dr. Hans Joachim Schäfer who had been obliged to resign for health reasons. Commentators have suggested that under her direction

5616-403: The end of 1981, Falcone finalised the Spatola case for trial, which enabled the prosecution to win 74 convictions, based on Falcone's "web of solid evidence, bank and travel records, seized heroin shipments, fingerprint and handwriting analyses, wiretapped conversations and firsthand testimony" that proved that "Sicily had replaced France as the principal gateway for refining and exporting heroin to

5720-529: The entire commission stepped down, amidst allegations that their work had been sabotaged, and with no sign of any final report. Giovanni Falcone Giovanni Falcone ( Italian: [dʒoˈvanni falˈkoːne] ; 18 May 1939 – 23 May 1992) was an Italian judge and prosecuting magistrate . From his office in the Palace of Justice in Palermo , Sicily , he spent most of his professional life trying to overthrow

5824-667: The explosives. Dozens of mafiosi were sentenced to life imprisonment for their involvement in Falcone's murder. Reports in May 2019 indicated that a Cosa Nostra insider revealed that John Gotti of the Gambino crime family had sent one of their explosives experts to Sicily to work with the Corleonesi Mafia clan to help plan the bombing that would kill Falcone. Palermo International Airport has been named Falcone-Borsellino Airport in honour of

5928-425: The first Commission numbered "not many more than ten" and the number was variable. Among the members of the first Commission in the province of Palermo were: The Commission, however, was not able to prevent the outbreak of a violent Mafia War in 1963. Casus belli was a heroin deal gone wrong, and the subsequent killing of Calcedonio Di Pisa on December 26, 1962, who was held responsible. Instead of settling

6032-558: The first Sicilian Mafia Commission for the province of Palermo was formed after a series of meetings between top American and Sicilian mafiosi that took place in Palermo between October 12–16, 1957, in the hotel Delle Palme and the Spanò seafood restaurant. US gangsters Joseph Bonanno and Lucky Luciano suggested their Sicilian counterparts to form a Commission, following the example of the American Mafia that had formed their Commission in

6136-400: The first among equals. Initially, the secretary had very little power. His task was simply to organize the meetings. Before that time, the Mafia families were not connected by a collective structure. According to judge Cesare Terranova , they "were a mosaic of small republics with topographical borders marked by tradition." In the days before the Commission, coordination inside Cosa Nostra

6240-399: The ground rules. Sometime in early 1958, the Sicilian Mafia formed its first Mafia Commission. It was formed among Mafia families in the province of Palermo , which had the highest concentration of cosche (Mafia families), approximately 46. Salvatore "Ciaschiteddu" Greco was appointed as its first segretario (secretary) or rappresentante regionale , essentially a primus inter pares –

6344-411: The group Bontade, Inzerillo and Pizzuto. A third group, Michele Greco, Riccobono and Salamone were not hostile to the group of Bontade but were against Gaetano Badalamenti. While the more established Mafia families in the city of Palermo refrained from openly killing authorities because that would attract too much police attention, the Corleonesi deliberately killed to intimidate the authorities in such

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6448-525: The group included Paolo Borsellino , Giuseppe Di Lello  [ it ] and Leonardo Guarnotta  [ it ] . The Antimafia pool laid the groundwork for the Maxi Trial against the Sicilian Mafia at the preliminary investigative phase. Following Chinnici's murder in July 1983, Antonino Caponnetto headed the pool. Falcone's friend Antonio Cassara (who headed the police squad hunting fugitives)

6552-578: The heroin-trafficking network of the Spatola-Inzerillo-Gambino clan. From Sicily, heroin was moved to the Gambino crime family in New York, who were related to the Inzerillos. Chinnici appointed Falcone to investigate the case, one of the biggest Antimafia operations in more than a decade. Costa signed the indictments after virtually all of the other prosecutors in his office had declined to do so –

6656-559: The hierarchical Mafia structure revealed by the Maxi Trial actually existed, and he attempted to force Falcone to work on cases of wife beating and car theft. Falcone became so frustrated that he spoke of resigning. During 1988 Falcone collaborated with Rudolph Giuliani , at the time U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York , in operations against the Gambino and Inzerillo families. Rumours impugning his integrity deeply troubled Falcone during this period. On 20 June 1989,

6760-457: The importance of hard work, bravery and patriotism; he later said they 'expected the maximum' from him. At school Falcone would get into fights with larger children if he thought his friends were being picked on. The Mafia was present in the area but quiescent; Tommaso Spadaro , a boy with whom he played ping-pong in the neighbourhood Catholic Action recreation centre, would later become a notorious Mafia smuggler and killer, but mafiosi were not

6864-602: The independence of Mafia families was superseded by the authoritarian rule of Riina. Nor did the killing end when the main rivals of the Corleonesi were defeated. Whoever could challenge Riina or had lost their usefulness was eliminated. Rosario Riccobono and a dozen men of his clan were killed in November 1982. Sometime in September 1985, Pino Greco was murdered in his home, shot to death by his two fellow Mafiosi and supposed friends, Vincenzo Puccio and Giuseppe Lucchese , although

6968-533: The judges Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino worked as well. It was Tommaso Buscetta who definitively revealed the existence and workings of the Commission, when he became a state witness and started to give evidence to judge Giovanni Falcone in 1984. It enabled Falcone to argue that Cosa Nostra was a unified hierarchical structure ruled by a Commission and that its leaders – who normally would not dirty their hands with criminal acts – could be held responsible for criminal activities that were committed to benefit

7072-489: The kind of public outrage and police crackdown that followed the 1992 murders of the widely admired Sicilian prosecutors Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino . According to press reports, when Provenzano was moved to the high security prison in Terni , Totò Riina's son Giovanni Riina , who has been sentenced to life imprisonment for three murders, yelled that Provenzano was a "sbirro" – a popular Italian pejorative expression for

7176-420: The major crackdown against the Mafia following Falcone and Borsellino's deaths, Riina was arrested on 15 January 1993, and was serving a life sentence, until his death in 2017, for sanctioning the murders of both magistrates as well as many other crimes. Brusca, also known as lo scannacristiani (the people slaughterer), was convicted of Falcone's murder. He was one of Riina's associates and admitted to detonating

7280-561: The mid-1950s. Cavataio killed Di Pisa in the knowledge that the La Barberas would be blamed by the Grecos and a war would be the result. He kept fuelling the war through other bomb attacks and killings. Cavataio was backed by other Mafia families who resented the growing power of the Mafia Commission to the detriment of individual Mafia families. Cavataio was killed on December 10, 1969, in

7384-799: The months after Riina's arrest in January 1993, there were a series of bombings by the Corleonesi against several tourist spots on the Italian mainland – the Via dei Georgofili in Florence , in Milan and the Piazza San Giovanni in Laterano and Via San Teodoro in Rome , which left 10 people dead and 93 injured as well as severe damage to centres of cultural heritage such as the Uffizi Gallery. Leoluca Bagarella , Riina's successor,

7488-500: The more moderate strategy of Provenzano. The incarcerated bosses are currently subjected to harsh controls on their contact with the outside world, limiting their ability to run their operations from behind bars under the article 41-bis prison regime . Antonino Giuffrè – a close confidant of Provenzano, turned pentito shortly after his capture in April 2002 – alleges that in 1993, Cosa Nostra had direct contact with representatives of former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi while he

7592-439: The most important factors in the trial was the testimony of Tommaso Buscetta , the first-ever Sicilian Mafiosi boss to become an informant ( pentito ). His assertion that the Mafia was not a collection of separate gangs but a single organisation led some magistrates and detectives to question his credibility. After an interview, Falcone became convinced that Buscetta was genuine and treated him with respect. Buscetta's key revelation

7696-523: The narrow escape. Falcone privately thought it odd that Andreotti, who he had never spoken to, would suddenly contact him, and he mused about the significance of the incident to a friend. Unknown to Falcone the efforts to kill him were suspended while the Maxi trial verdicts went through the appeals process that had often set convicted Mafia members free. Later investigations into the murders of two police officers, Antonino Agostino and Emanuele Piazza, who worked for

7800-421: The new minister of Justice in a new government of Giulio Andreotti in March 1991. The transfer was initially seen as a capitulation by Falcone, but he himself thought of it as a tactical move to better fight the Mafia. His first action was to prepare a decree to repair the disastrous sentence by Supreme Court judge Corrado Carnevale , known as the “sentence-killer”, that allowed most of the remaining defendants of

7904-453: The north'. After a classical education, Falcone studied law at the University of Palermo following a brief period of study at Livorno's naval academy . Falcone and Borsellino met again at Palermo University. While Falcone drifted away from his parents' middle-class conservative Catholicism towards communism , Borsellino was religious and conservative; in his youth, he had been a member of

8008-456: The old Mafia rules that had been abolished by Totò Riina , together with Riina and Leoluca Bagarella , he was ruling the Corleonesi faction. Giovanni Brusca – one of Riina's hitmen who personally detonated the bomb that killed Falcone, and later became an informant after his 1996 arrest – has offered a controversial version of the capture of Totò Riina : a secret deal between Carabinieri officers, secret agents and Cosa Nostra bosses tired of

8112-410: The orders came from Riina, who felt Greco was getting too ambitious and too independently minded for his liking. The Commission in fact lost its autonomy and became a mere enforcement body that enforced the decisions made by Riina and Provenzano and their close group of allies. According to Buscetta: "With the power gained by the Corleonesi and their allies the traditional organizational structures had

8216-484: The organisation. The existence and functioning of the Commission was confirmed by the first degree conviction. The Mafia was identified with the Cosa Nostra organization, and defined a unique, pyramidal and apex type organization, provincially directed by a Commission or Cupola and regionally by an interprovincial organism, in which the head of the Palermo Commission has a hegemonic role. This premise became known as

8320-493: The police investigation squad investigating heroin trafficking by the Mafia headed by Rosario Spatola and Salvatore Inzerillo . Taking Terranova's place was Rocco Chinnici , who was murdered by the Mafia in July 1983. On 5 May 1980, Giuliano's successor in investigating the heroin network, Carabinieri captain Emanuele Basile , was killed. The next day, the prosecuting judge Gaetano Costa signed 55 arrest warrants against

8424-565: The power of the Sicilian Mafia . After a long and distinguished career, culminating in the Maxi Trial in 1986–1987, on 23 May 1992, Falcone was assassinated by the Corleonesi Mafia in the Capaci bombing , on the A29 motorway near the town of Capaci . His life parallels that of his close friend Paolo Borsellino . They both spent their early years in the same neighbourhood in Palermo. Though many of their childhood friends grew up in an environment in which

8528-631: The power to nominate a successor, which is not unanimously accepted among Mafia observers. "The Mafia today is more of a federation and less of an authoritarian state," according to anti-Mafia prosecutor Antonio Ingroia of the Direzione distrettuale antimafia (DDA) of Palermo, referring to the previous period of authoritarian rule under Salvatore Riina . Provenzano "established a kind of directorate of about four to seven people who met very infrequently, only when necessary, when there were strategic decisions to make." According to Ingroia "in an organization like

8632-436: The provinces but were chosen on the basis of their allegiance to Riina's faction, and eventually were only called to legitimize decisions that had already been made elsewhere. The Second Mafia War raged from 1981 to 1983. On April 23, 1981, Bontade was machine-gunned to death in his car in Palermo. Bontade's close ally, Salvatore Inzerillo , was killed three weeks later with the same Kalashnikov . The Corleonesi slaughtered

8736-412: The regulation of the use of violence. It had exclusive authority to order murder of police officials, prosecutors and judges, politicians, journalists and lawyers, because these killings could provoke retaliation by law enforcement. To limit internal conflicts, it was agreed that each family boss had to ask the Commission's authorisation before killing any member of another family. Until the early 1980s,

8840-521: The rivals were Matteo Messina Denaro (from Castelvetrano and the province of Trapani), Salvatore Lo Piccolo (boss of Tommaso Natale area and the mandamento of San Lorenzo in Palermo), and Domenico Raccuglia from Altofonte . Provenzano allegedly nominated Messina Denaro in one of his pizzini – small slips of paper used to communicate with other mafiosi to avoid phone conversations, found at Provenzano's hide out. This presupposes that Provenzano has

8944-438: The rules concerning loyalty in Cosa Nostra. This secretive inter-family group became known as the Corleonesi . The wing headed by Badalamenti and Bontade defended the existing balance of power between the single Mafia families and the Commission. Thanks to a shrewd manipulation of the rules and elimination of its most powerful rivals - in particular, the 1978 killings of Giuseppe Calderone and Giuseppe Di Cristina , members of

9048-457: The ruling families of the Palermo Mafia to take control of the organisation while waging a parallel war against Italian authorities and law enforcement to intimidate and prevent effective investigations and prosecutions. More than 200 mafiosi were killed and many simply disappeared. In 1982, the Commission members were: The Commission was now dominated by Riina and Provenzano. More and more,

9152-452: The secret service, revealed that they had secretly defused the bombs that had been placed by a Mafia commando aided by other secret service men. Agostino and his wife were killed on 5 August 1989 outside their home, and Piazza on 15 March 1990. Exhausted and frustrated by the antagonism in Palermo, Falcone accepted a post in the Ministry of Justice in Rome offered to him by Claudio Martelli ,

9256-417: The so-called Viale Lazio massacre in Palermo as retaliation for the events in 1963. According to Buscetta and Grado, the composition of the hit squad was a clear indication that the killing had been sanctioned collectively by all the major Sicilian Mafia families: not only did it include Calogero Bagarella and Bernardo Provenzano from Corleone, and members of Stefano Bontade 's family in Palermo, but also

9360-464: The time had moved to the Ministry of Justice. Falcone was backed by the Minister of Justice Claudio Martelli despite the fact that he served under Prime Minister Andreotti. In March 1992, Lima was killed, followed by Falcone and Paolo Borsellino later that year. Beyond the provincial level, details are vague. According to the pentito Tommaso Buscetta , an Interprovincial Commission was created in

9464-485: The time they had already spent in captivity while awaiting trial. Under these circumstances, the Sicilian Mafia Commission was revived in 1970. It eventually consisted of ten members but initially it was ruled by a triumvirate consisting of Gaetano Badalamenti , Stefano Bontade and the Corleonesi boss Luciano Leggio , although it was Salvatore Riina who represented the Corleonesi, substituting Leggio who

9568-512: The two judges and hosts a memorial of the pair by the local sculptor Tommaso Geraci . Monuments commemorating Falcone and the other victims of the Capaci bombing were placed around Italy, including in Peschiera del Garda . Falcone was posthumously awarded the Train Foundation 's Civil Courage Prize , which recognises "extraordinary heroes of conscience". A monument to Falcone stands also at

9672-475: The various families and their bosses" in order to discipline members of each family. Only later did its function expand to "the regulation of the activities of all families in a province." The first time the existence of such a Commission filtered out to the rest of the world was in 1965 during the inquiry into the First Mafia War by judge Cesare Terranova . Terranova based himself on a confidential report of

9776-527: The ‘Office of Instruction’ (Ufficio istruzione), the investigative branch of the Prosecution Office of Palermo. He started to work at a particularly tense moment. Judge Cesare Terranova , a former parliamentary deputy and Antimafia reformer who had been the main prosecutor of the Mafia in the 1960s, was to have headed this office, but he was killed on 25 September 1979. Only two months earlier, on 21 July 1979, Boris Giuliano had been assassinated; he headed

9880-677: Was born and grew up in Prato , a commercially dynamic city a short distance to the north-west of Florence in Italy . From 1990 she studied Political Sciences at Florence University , later moving on to the European University Institute (also in Florence) where she received her doctorate in 1997 in return for a piece of work entitled "The Pledge to Secrecy: Culture, Structure and Action of Mafia Associations". Her dissertation, which earned her

9984-458: Was captured on June 24, 1995, Bagarella was arrested, having been a fugitive for four years. Provenzano then took the reins, establishing new guidelines: patience, compartmentalisation, coexistence with state institutions, and systematic infiltration of public finance. The diplomatic Provenzano tried to stem the flow of pentiti by not targeting their families, only using violence in case of absolute necessity. Provenzano reportedly re-established

10088-523: Was dissolved and of those mafiosi who had escaped arrest, many went abroad. "Ciaschiteddu" Greco fled to Caracas in Venezuela. According to Tommaso Buscetta, it was Michele Cavataio , the boss of the Acquasanta quarter of Palermo, who was responsible for the Ciaculli bomb, and possibly the murder of boss Calcedonio Di Pisa in late 1962. Cavataio had lost out to the Grecos in a war of the wholesale market in

10192-483: Was ensured by informal meetings among the most influential members of the most powerful families. In fact, the decision to form a Commission was a formalisation of these occasional meetings into a permanent, collegial body. Originally, to avoid excessive concentration of power in the hands of a few individuals, it was decided that only "men of honour" holding no leadership position within their own family – in other words, simple "soldiers" – could be appointed as members of

10296-426: Was expelled from the Commission and as head of his Family. Michele Greco replaced him as the secretary of the Commission. Badalamenti's removal marked the end of a period of relative peace and signified a major change in the Mafia itself. In 1978, the Commission was composed by: The Commission was divided between the Corleonesi (Riina, Calò, Madonia, Brusca, Geraci, Greco, Motisi and probably Scaglione as well) and

10400-521: Was murdered in 1985. Falcone led the prosecution for the trial, which began 10 February 1986, and ended on 16 December 1987. Of the 475 defendants—both those present and those tried in absentia —338 were convicted. A total of 2,665 years of prison sentences was shared out between the guilty, not including the life sentences handed to the 19 leading Mafia bosses and killers, including Michele Greco , Giuseppe Marchese and— in absentia — Salvatore Riina , Giuseppe Lucchese and Bernardo Provenzano . One of

10504-500: Was on the run until his arrest in 1974. In 1974, the “full” Commission was restored under the leadership of Gaetano Badalamenti. Among the members were: (Several pentiti , such as Salvatore Cancemi , Francesco Di Carlo and Giovanni Brusca say that Giuseppe Farinella , for the Gangi - San Mauro Castelverde mandamento, Francesco Intile for the Caccamo mandamento and Antonio Mineo for

10608-538: Was planning the birth of Forza Italia . The deal that he says was alleged to have been made was a repeal of 41 bis, among other anti-Mafia laws in return for delivering electoral gains in Sicily. Giuffrè's declarations have not been confirmed. During a court appearance in July 2002, Leoluca Bagarella suggested unnamed politicians had failed to maintain agreements with the Mafia over prison conditions. "We are tired of being exploited, humiliated, harassed and used as merchandise by political factions," he said. Nevertheless,

10712-522: Was probably among the first Sicilian magistrates to establish working relationships with colleagues from other countries, thus developing an early understanding of the global dimensions of heroin trafficking, while enhancing the meagre investigative resources of his office. A colleague was astonished to discover that Falcone, who had no computers at his disposal, was personally recording the details listed on printouts of transactions that he had requisitioned from every bank in Palermo province. He learned that

10816-451: Was that a governing council, known as the Commission or Cupula headed a collective structure, thereby establishing that the top tier of Mafia members were complicit in all the organisation's crimes. This premise became known as the Buscetta theorem. When Falcone's record of success and high profile led to resentment from some quarters, he was not given the job he coveted as chief prosecutor in Palermo. The new incumbent did not accept that

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