Genoa follow-up - for your records - Reuters articles on Mr. Gennaro (It

27Jul2001 UK: Genoa riots - The dark side of Italy's paramilitary force. 
By Rory Carroll.
Rightwing thugs employed as Italian police officers were told by superiors
they could brutalise with impunity the protesters detained in Genoa, it was
claimed yesterday.
Officers seized the opportunity to batter, terrify and humiliate dozens of
people after being assured they had the "cover" to do so, according to the
Rome daily La Repubblica.
An anonymous police officer confirmed the accounts of torture given by the
bruised, shaken protesters released from prison. "Unfortunately, it is all
true."
The officer claimed that as last weekend's assaults intensified and victims
passed out he asked colleagues to stop. He alleges that they told him: "We
don't have to worry because we are covered."
He admitted his men had run amok in the protesters' headquarters but claimed
that the alleged torture in the Bolzaneto holding centre was the work of
GOM, the penitentiary police. He said GOM officers wore black gloves and
boasted in advance of teaching the anarchists a lesson.
The three inquiries launched into the police violence will attempt to
determine who gave the orders but there is no doubt that scores of police
officers agreed to follow the orders.
The question of how such bloodlust consumed some members of the police and
paramilitary carabinieri has sparked uproar in parliament. There is pressure
for a commission of inquiry which could oust cabinet ministers.
Francisco Martone, a Green party senator, told the BBC that fascists had
infiltrated the police.
Released Italian, German and Spanish protesters yesterday spoke of heads
being banged against walls, threats of rape with batons, people vomiting
blood, soiling themselves and being urinated upon.
Football fans have long complained about the dark side of Italian policing
but opinion polls have shown robust public support for responses to fan
violence.
A green light from above was enough to unleash savagery for a number of
reasons. The police are generally rightwing and have a tradition of
suppressing leftwing protest. A popular ditty goes: "One, two, three, viva
Pinochet/ four, five, six, death to the Jews."
Silvio Berlusconi's ruling coalition includes the post-fascist National
Alliance which won last May's election partly on a platform of law and
order. Some commentators suggest this may have emboldened police commanders.
The carabinieri are considered less political but can be gung-ho. Jokes
about their stupidity pepper Italian dinner parties.
The decision to deploypoorly trained conscripts serving their one-year
military service was a major blunder. They proved easily frightened and
easily provoked, and after two days of dodging rocks they wanted revenge.
Many are from the south where poverty, poor education and conservatism
breeds suspicion of the anti-globalisation movement.
The intelligence services hyped them up with warnings of terrorist attack
and supposed anarchist tactics - such as hurling bags of HIV-infected blood.
Days before the summit they were already jumpy.
Enrico Sciaccaluga, 19, a Genoa student, said some were so agitated the
night of the raid that they appeared drugged.
Another explanation offered is that the police chief, Gianni De Gennaro,
knew all about fighting the mafia but nothing about crowd control. 
Sources:GUARDIAN 27/07/2001 P3 
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27Jul2001 UK: The dark side of Italy's paramilitary force. 
By Rory Carroll.
Rory Carroll
Rightwing thugs employed as Italian police officers were told by superiors
they could brutalise with impunity the protesters detained in Genoa, it was
claimed yesterday.
Officers seized the opportunity to batter, terrify and humiliate dozens of
people after being assured they had the `cover' to do so, according to the
Rome daily La Repubblica.
An anonymous police officer confirmed the accounts of torture given by the
bruised, shaken protestors released from prison. `Unfortunately, it is all
true.'
The officer claimed that as last weekend's assaults intensified and victims
passed out he asked colleagues to stop. He alleges that they told him: `We
don't have to worry because we are covered.'
He admitted his men had run amok in the protesters' headquarters but claimed
that the alleged torture in the Bolzaneto holding centre was the work of
GOM, the penitentiary police. He said GOM officers wore black gloves and
boasted in advance of teaching the anarchists a lesson.
The three inquiries launched into the police violence will attempt to
determine who gave the orders but there is no doubt that scores of police
officers agreed to follow the orders.
The question of how such bloodlust consumed some members of the police and
paramilitary carabinieri has sparked uproar in parliament. There is pressure
for a commission of inquiry which could oust cabinet ministers.
Francisco Martone, a Green party senator, told the BBC that fascists had
infiltrated the police.
Released Italian, German and Spanish protestors yesterday spoke of heads
being banged against walls, threats of rape with batons, people vomiting
blood, soiling themselves and being urinated upon.
Football fans have long complained about the dark side of Italian policing
but opinion polls have shown robust public support for responses to fan
violence.
A green light from above was enough to unleash savagery for a number of
reasons. The police are generally rightwing and have a tradition of
suppressing leftwing protest. A popular ditty goes: `One, two, three, viva
Pinochet/ four, five, six, death to the Jews.'
Silvio Berlusconi's ruling coalition includes the post-fascist National
Alliance which won last May's election partly on a platform of law and
order. Some commentators suggest this may have emboldened police commanders.
The carabinieri are considered less political but can be gung-ho. Jokes
about their stupidity pepper Italian dinner parties.
The decision to deploypoorly trained conscripts serving their one-year
military service was a major blunder. They proved easily frightened and
easily provoked, and after two days of dodging rocks they wanted revenge.
Many are from the south where poverty, poor education and conservatism
breeds suspicion of the anti-globalisation movement.
The intelligence services hyped them up with warnings of terrorist attack
and supposed anarchist tactics - such as hurling bags of HIV-infected blood.
Days before the summit they were already jumpy.
Enrico Sciaccaluga, 19, a Genoa student, said some were so agitated the
night of the raid that they appeared drugged.
Another explanation offered is that the police chief, Gianni De Gennaro,
knew all about fighting the mafia but nothing about crowd control. 
Sources:GUARDIAN 27/07/2001 P3 
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08Apr2000 REPUBLIC OF IRELAND: `First, they'll try to kill me, then it'll be
your turn,' warned the mobster tu
Tommaso Buscetta, who died this week, did the unthinkable for a Mafia don -
he talked. Paddy Agnew in Rome reviews the life of a man whose explosive
evidence was behind Italy's Cosa Nostra trials of recent years

`I'm not a spy ... I'm not a grass either ... I was a mafioso and I have
done many wrong things for which I am willing to pay, in full, my debt to
society."
At about 12.30 a.m. on July 16th, 1984, in the stifling heat of a small
office in the Criminalpol headquarters in Rome, ex-Mafia boss, Tommaso
Buscetta started to sing. Buscetta, otherwise known as Don Masino, began his
collaboration with the state by uttering the above words to a then
little-known, Palermo-based investigator called Giovanni Falcone. Buscetta
knew only too well the significance of his decision to turn state's witness,
thus breaking the code of omerta that had only rarely been broken before and
never by a godfather as powerful as himself. He knew this was a significant
moment, both for himself and for Falcone.
Leaning forward in his chair, he said to the young investigator: "First,
they'll try to kill me, then it'll be your turn. They'll keep trying until
they succeed." The Mafia did, of course, succeed in killing Giovanni
Falcone, blowing him up in a bomb attack in May 1992. Ironically, Cosa
Nostra failed to kill Don Masino. The man who has long been known in Italy
as Il Primo Pentito (the first turncoat) died on Sunday at the age of 71,
killed not by the bullet of a professional hit man but rather by lung
cancer.
He died in Florida, where he had lived under the auspices of a witness
protection programme for most of the last 14 years. To his neighbours in the
US and to the doctors who treated him, his name was Roberto. Typically for a
man who had lived a cloak and dagger existence, details of his death were
not released for two days. A convicted mobster, Tommaso Buscetta cut a
larger than life figure. A confirmed womaniser, he was married three times
in three continents while he also had numerous affairs. His treading of the
primrose path of dalliance earned him disapproval within the conservative
world of Cosa Nostra.
Boss of Bosses and arch enemy, Toto Riina, once said to him, in reference to
his libertine lifestyle: "You don't know how to behave, Buscetta. You're not
a serious person." Toto Riina was wrong. Tommaso Buscetta proved to be a
very serious dude, indeed - first as a big-time, drug dealing mobster and
then, of course, as the man whose collaboration with state investigators was
to change the whole impact of Italy's previously hesitant fight against
organised crime. Buscetta's testimony was a key element in the state
prosecution's case at the 1986-87 Maxi Processo in Palermo which resulted in
prison sentences for more than 300 mafiosi in relation to 121 murders and
other crimes.
Buscetta's life as a mobster began early in wartime Palermo when, at the age
of 16, he was hired to muscle into the black market for flour. Throughout
the 1950s and into the 1960s, he was heavily involved in cigarette
smuggling, apparently organising his consignments of Camel and Pall Mall
from from the Bar Commercio in central Palermo. Those, of course, were
different times, an era when the word Mafia never appeared in Sicilian
newspapers and an era when Don Masino, in order to reclaim his passport -
withdrawn because of criminal convictions - merely wrote a letter to the
Palermo Questura, asking for a new one. It duly arrived, permitting him to
globe-trot through North and South America on "family business" using names
that varied from Mario Conserva to Manuel Lopez Cadena to Roberto.
Arrested on Brooklyn Bridge in New York in June 1970 on Mafia charges,
Buscetta made one effective phone call from the police station. Within
hours, bail of $75,000 had been paid on his behalf. Two years later,
however, things did not work out so nicely when he was arrested in Brazil on
drug trafficking charges. Extradited to Italy, he was to spend much of the
1970s in prison in Palermo and then Turin before escaping, again to South
America after "surprisingly" being granted house arrest by a Turin court.
The next few years, however, were to radically change Buscetta's life. While
he was in Brazil, his family became involved in bitter gangland warfare in
Palermo that saw his brother, a son-in-law and two nephews killed.
Tired of life on the run and terrified for his own safety, he started to
reflect on his future. When he was arrested in Brazil in 1983, magistrate
Falcone travelled out from Palermo, armed with a series of questions for
Buscetta. Informed of his forthcoming interview with the Palermo magistrate,
Buscetta opted to put on a bella figura, presenting himself to an astonished
Falcone in a double-breasted white jacket, dark blue shirt with cravat and
black trousers. He had long ago learned that a mafioso must always look in
control of the situation. Falcone presented Buscetta his list of questions.
Don Masino read it carefully and then looked up: "Magistrate, how long have
you got? It would take me all of today and well into tomorrow to begin
answering this lot..."
Less than one year later, sensing that the circle was closing in on him and
that it would be a close thing as to whether his former business associates
back in Sicily or the long arm of the law got to him first, Buscetta cracked
and attempted to commit suicide by swallowing strychnine. Within days of the
failed suicide attempt, however, Brazil agreed to Italy's request for his
extradition Even at this late stage, he almost slipped through the noose.
When Gianni De Gennaro, the senior Criminalpol officer sent to escort him
back to Italy, arrived at Rio de Janeiro international airport on Friday
July 13th, he found that no one - Italian consulate, Brazilian police or
others - had bothered to book a ticket for Buscetta. De Gennaro had to argue
hard with local airport authorities before he was finally allowed to leave
with his precious cargo, having dipped into his own pocket to buy Don
Masino's ticket home.
Three days later, Buscetta began his historic testimony. It went on for 45
days, prompting Falcone to order 3,600 checks on the evidence and resulting
in the issue of 366 arrest warrants. Buscetta knew that his evidence would
not sink the Mafia, but he knew likewise that it would strike a blow such as
had never previously been struck, while also putting sworn enemies behind
bars. Buscetta had told Falcone much, but not all. When it came to naming
those politicians who had colluded with Cosa Nostra, Buscetta warned
Falcone: "You don't want to know, the time is premature."
In the meantime, though, Cosa Nostra inevitably fought back, first killing
another three members of Buscetta's family, including two sons. Later in
court, in a dramatic confrontation with one of the mafiosi he had fingered,
godfather Pippo Calo, Buscetta revealed something of his sense of personal
vendetta. Infuriated by Calo's ploy of pretending not to know him, Buscetta
thundered at him: "You who pretend not to know me, who brought up my own two
boys, the same two that you had taken out..."
Cosa Nostra, of course, continued to fight back, striking a wounding blow at
the Italian state when it blew up not only Giovanni Falcone in May 1992 but
also his friend and mafia-investigating colleague, Paolo Borsellino, two
months later. Those two killings prompted Buscetta to change tack. The time
was now ripe to name names, political names. In 1993, he named the biggest
one of all - the seven-times prime minister of the post-war era.
In a celebrated exchange during Senator Andreotti's trial, defence lawyer
Franco Coppi asked Buscetta if the evidence he had just given had been based
on speculation or direct knowledge. Buscetta answered that his knowledge was
based on the reality of life. Life's reality might have been important to
Buscetta. But as evidence in a court of law, it cut no ice. It thus came as
little surprise when courts in both Perugia and Palermo rejected his
evidence and acquitted Andreotti and new legislation insists that mafia
turncoats give evidence based only on their direct knowledge.
The judgment disillusioned Buscetta: a disillusionment that was reflected in
the title of his last books - The Mafia Has Won. 
Sources:IRISH TIMES 08/04/2000 P13 
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26Aug1996 ITALY: PRESS DIGEST - Italy - Monday August 26. 
MILAN, Aug 26 (Reuter) - Following are some of the top headlines in leading
Italian newspapers.
-----------
TOP POLITICAL STORIES
* The European Commission in Brussels says no to deputy Prime minister
Walter Veltroni, who had proposed to revise Maastricht Treaty's criteria for
joining the single European currency. "The schedule is realistic and must be
mantained" (all).
* Freedom Alliance leader Silvio Berlusconi agrees with Veltroni's proposal
but says Deputy Prime minister is joining the debate late: "I said the same
things two years ago" (all). In an interview Defense minister Beniamino
Andreatta says "It would be foolish to ask for a delay" (La Repubblica).
* Deputy Police chief Gianni De Gennaro says that behind former mafia boss
Giovanni Brusca's decision to cooperate with magistrates, there might be a
"terrorist strategy against the State". "He might prove his sincerity by
delivering fortunes and members of his clan" (all).
* Christian Democrat Senator and former Prime minister Giulio Andreotti says
in an interview that his trial for association with the mafia has been
"built up". "Palermo's mayor Leoluca Orlando insisted on my indictment" (Il
Giornale).
* Freedom Alliance leader Silvio Berlusconi, speaking of recent debate over
potential conflict within the alliance, says: "Everyone is free to go where
they want".
-------------
TOP BUSINESS STORIES
* This week the government starts a "tour de force" to define his strategy
for the economy, ahead of the 1997 budget (Il Sole 24 Ore).
* Trade Union leader Sergio Cofferati says government should not cut
retirement funds to reduce Italy's public debt (La Stampa).
--------------
Reuters has not verified these stories and cannot vouch for their accuracy.
-- Milan bureau +39266129450 
(c) Reuters Limited 1996 
Sources:REUTERS NEWS SERVICE 
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE - WESTERN EUROPE 
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE 
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22May1996 UK: GOODBYE GODFATHER. 
By Paul Eccleston.
BOSS OF BOSSES HELD AS HE EATS BISCUITS WITH MILK AND WATCHES

His downfall, when it came, could have been lifted from the screenplay of
The Godfather.
Like Francis Ford Coppola's classic gangster film trilogy, it was a scene
where the monstrous and the mundane co-exist.
For when the law caught up with one of the world's most ruthless mobsters,
there was no police shoot-out, no revenge killing - just a swift, bloodless
house arrest.
And their target, Italy's most feared man, couldn't have looked less like
the public perception of a Godfather.
Sprawled in front of the TV, guzzling milk and biscuits, Giovanni Brusca was
no one's idea of Don Corleone.
But Brusca - acknowledged to be the Capo di tutti Capo (Boss of Bosses) - is
the man held responsible for a spate of bombings and killings across Italy.
Last night he was behind bars, the culmination of a four-month operation to
bring him to justice.
Just one aspect of his capture might have been rejected as too much of a
coincidence for a film script. At the time of his arrest, he was watching a
TV documentary - about the Mafia.
Brusca's arrest on Monday night is the latest coup for Italian gangbusters.
They have been fighting the criminal secret society for decades but its
tentacles reach far and wide, touching every facet of Italian society.
Crusading Magistrate Giovanni Falcone led a brave bid to smash the power of
the Mafia. Falcone had had spectacular success in "turning" former Mafia
footsoldiers - getting them to testify against their Godfathers.
But as more and more Mafiosi were caged, a wave of revenge bomb attacks hit
Rome, Florence and Milan.
The terror campaign culminated in the 1992 car-bomb murder of Falcone, his
wife and three bodyguards, a crime widely believed to have been carried out
by Brusca.
Falcone's death may not have been in vain. Pictures of the scene of his
assassination were flashed around the world, provoking an international
tidal wave of revulsion.
People who had been too terrified to speak against the Mafia started to come
forward.
Top Mafia men such as Giovanni Russo and Tommaso Buscetta were scooped up by
the authorities.
But the real breakthrough came with the arrest of superboss Salvatore "The
Beast"" Riina, captured in 1993 after 23 years on the run. Riina, the
Corleonesi clan chief, and his brother-in-law Leoluca Bagarella are now
behind bars.
It is believed that Giovanni Brusca succeeded Riina as Godfather of the
notorious Corleone family, which was immortalised in the Godfather films.
Brusca's reign of terror came to an end as armed police kicked down the door
of his seaside house in south-west Sicily.
He surrendered without a struggle and was driven to police headquarters in
Palermo.
The arrest of the Mafia chieftain is seen as a major victory but the Italian
authorities know the war is far from over.
Giancarlo Caselli, head of the judiciary in the Sicilian capital Palermo,
said: "Our next objective has to be to smash the Cosa Nostra as an
organisation, an economic power. There's still plenty to do."
Traditionally, the Mafia's activities have been extortion, drug trafficking
and the syphoning of government contract money through contacts with
politicians and its stranglehold on the building industry.
Magistrates allege that the Sicilian mob's influence extended to the top of
government, with former prime minister Giulio Andreotti currently on trial
on charges he was its main protector in Rome.
The Mafia also works abroad as was illustrated by the so-called Pizza
Connection trial in New York in the mid-Eighties. It showed the Sicilian Mob
banded together with its American counterparts to smuggle heroin using pizza
parlours on the East Coast as cover.
In Sicily, the police operation against Brusca had been going on since
January. Brusca, 39, a master of disguise, gave them the slip three times.
Described as "chubby-faced with chillingly cold eyes", the son of a Mafioso
often grew moustaches or beards to change his appearance. He had a beard and
was wearing a casual shirt when he was captured.
Deputy head of state police Gianni De Gennaro said his men now had other
mobsters in their sights.
"The success we've had shouldn't make us lower our guard a centimetre," De
Gennaro said.
"There are still many dangerous fugitives on the run. Brusca's arrest is
clearly a victory but it is not decisive in the battle against Cosa Nostra."
Brusca, a much-feared stalwart of the Corleone family, is alleged to have
used an electric saw to mutilate kidnap victims.
And, in an act of intimidation, he is believed to have strangled the young
son of a Mafia supergrass then dissolved the boy's body in a bath of acid.
Brusca is also suspected of blowing up the Uffizi art gallery in Florence
three years ago, planting bombs in Milan which killed five people and
destroying two churches in Rome.
But as the euphoria over Brusca's arrest dies down, Giancarlo Caselli offers
a sobering warning: "One can't forget a fundamental fact when you talk about
the Mafia.
"It is, above all else, an organisation able to replace its captured bosses,
heal its wounds and mend its ripped fabric."
(c) Mirror Group Ltd, 1996. 
Sources:THE MIRROR 22/5/96 P6 
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21May1996 ITALY: Mafia-watchers say war on Mob is not won yet. 
By Jude Webber
ROME, May 21 (Reuter) - Police and politicians delighted on Tuesday in the
capture of Italy's public enemy number one but warned that the war on the
Mafia was not yet won.
More than a hundred policemen, some of them wearing sinister-looking masks,
sealed off a seaside house in southwest Sicily on Monday night and arrested
top fugutive Giovanni Brusca and his brother as they watched a television
film on the Mafia.
Newspaper pictures on Tuesday showed the 39-year-old, who was accused of
being the Mob's brutal "boss of bosses", as a young-looking, chubby-faced
man with chillingly cold eyes.
Police said Brusca, who was the son of a Mafioso, often grew moustaches or
beards to change his appearance and had a shaved head and was wearing a
tee-shirt when he was captured.
He was believed to be the heir of superboss Salvatore "The Beast" Riina,
captured in 1993 after 23 years on the run.
Mafia turncoats say Brusca set off the device that killed star anti-Mob
judge Giovanni Falcone almost exactly four years ago. He is also accused of
strangling an 11-year-old boy whose father helped police and dissolving his
body in a bath of acid.
Brusca is further blamed for bombs in 1993 that the Mafia planted in Rome,
Florence and Milan after Riina's capture.
"Arresting the bosses is hugely important but Cosa Nostra is capable of
healing its wounds," warned Giancarlo Caselli, head of the judiciary in the
Sicilian capital Palermo.
"Our next objective has to be Cosa Nostra as an organisation, an economic
power...There's still plenty to do."
Rino Monaco, head of an anti-Mafia branch of the Italian police, said Brusca
was "frozen, like he was paralised" when agents burst into the house. "He
didn't say a single word."
Brusca and his younger brother Vincenzo were due to be transferred to a high
security jail after their first formal interrogation by magistrates. Police
also detained Brusca's girlfriend and his brother's wife but released them
on Tuesday.
The capture is a coup for Italy's new centre-left government, which vowed to
renew its fight on organised crime at a conference attended by Louis Freeh,
head of the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation, soon after being sworn in
on Saturday.
Interior Minister Giorgio Napolitano said the Brusca capture was a major
international event that boosted Italy's standing.
Police said the meticulous operation had been going on since January and
that Brusca had managed to give investigators the slip three times.
Most of the Mafia's top "Godfathers" have been captured in a renewed
crackdown born out of the public outrage that followed Falcone's killing on
May 23, 1992.
Italy's then leading anti-Mafia crusader, his wife and three bodyguards were
blown to bits by a massive bomb in a drain under a highway near Palermo that
left a hole like a moon crater.
Riina, the Corleonesi clan chief whose reign of terror shook even the Mob,
and brother-in-law Leoluca Bagarella are in jail.
Deputy head of state police Gianni De Gennaro said mobsters Bernardo
Provenzano and Pietro Aglieri were the next targets.
"The success we've had...shouldn't make us lower our guard a centimetre," De
Gennaro said. "There are still many dangerous fugitives on the run. Brusca's
arrest is clearly a victory...but it is not decisive in the battle against
Cosa Nostra."
De Gennaro said the image of the Corleone clan, based in the hilltop town
that was immortalised in Hollywood's "Godfather" movies, would be badly
dented by Brusca's arrest.
But Pino Arlacchi, former chairman of a parliamentary anti-Mafia commission,
said he did not expect to see it loosen its stranglehold on the
organisation.
"They have wiped out anyone who did not belong to their faction," he said.
"There's no-one else in the Mafia who can replace the Corleone." 
(c) Reuters Limited 1996 
Sources:REUTERS NEWS SERVICE 
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE - WESTERN EUROPE 
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE 
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20May1996 ITALY: Arrest of Brusca leaves two top Mafiosi on run. 
PALERMO, Sicily, May 21 (Reuter) - The arrest of Giovanni Brusca, believed
by many investigators to have been the man most recently in control of the
Mafia, marks a major success for Italy in its assault on organised crime.
His capture leaves two men at the top of the most wanted list, Pietro
Aglieri and Bernardo Provenzano. "We must now devote our maximum attention
to (them)," said Italy's deputy police chief Gianni de Gennaro.
Brusca's arrest with his brother Vincenzo at a seaside villa in southwest
Sicily on Monday night continued a string of breakthroughs that have put
most of the known top "Godfathers" behind bars.
The crackdown began on a wave of public outrage following the murders of top
anti-Mafia investigators Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino in 1992 and
coincided with the beginning of the end of Italy's old governing guard in
corruption scandals.
"Boss of Bosses" Salvatore "The Beast" Riina, the Corleonesi clan leader
whose reign of terror shook even the Mob, was arrested in January 1993 after
more than 23 years at large.
Since then, virtually the entire "cupola" or Mafia ruling commission built
up under Riina's bloody grip has been arrested, including his brother-in-law
Leoluca Bagarella.
Following are brief pen pictures of Brusca and the two men still at large.
GIOVANNI BRUSCA -- Aged 36, Brusca is charged with masterminding the bombing
that blew up Falcone, his wife and three bodyguards on a motorway outside
the Sicilian capital Palermo four years ago this week. Investigators allege
he pressed the button that detonated the remote control bomb.
A member of a traditional crime family from San Giuseppe Jato, in mountains
outside Palermo, he is also accused of involvement in bombings in Rome,
Florence and Milan in 1993.
In chilling testimony, a turncoat has alleged that Brusca personally
strangled an 11-year-old boy last year and dissolved his body in a bath of
acid. The child, Giuseppe di Matteo, was abducted by mobsters posing as
police officers in 1993 after his father Santo turned state's evidence about
the Falcone killing.
Brusca was sentenced to life imprisonment in his absence in January for the
1992 murder of Ignazio Salvo, a tax inspector in Sicily believed to have
been close to the Mafia.
BERNARDO PROVENZANO - Nicknamed "Binu the Tractor" because he "mows people
down", Provenzano, 62, has been sought for more than 25 years. Like Riina,
with whom he grew up in Corleone, a hilltop town immortalised in Hollywood's
Godfather movies, he has been charged with Falcone's killing.
Luciano Liggio, the Mafia's late "boss of bosses", is said to have described
Provenzano as a man who "shoots like a god (but) has the brains of a
chicken".
Suspicions that Provenzano was dead were fuelled in 1992 when his wife and
children returned to live openly in Corleone after years in hiding,
apparently in a German-speaking country.
A handwritten letter bearing his signature and apparently confirming he was
alive was delivered to a Palermo court two years ago. It named defence
lawyers in one of his trials.
PIETRO AGLIERI - Aglieri, in his late thirties, has officially been on the
run since 1989 and leads the Santa Maria del Gesu (Holy Mary of Jesus) clan,
based in citrus fruit farmland outside the Sicilian capital.
Sentenced in his absence in 1994 to 20 years in jail for heading a
transatlantic heroin ring, he was almost caught in November 1993 during a
wild car chase through Palermo.
Aglieri has been indicted for the Falcone and Borsellino killings. 
(c) Reuters Limited 1996 
Sources:REUTERS NEWS SERVICE 
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE - WESTERN EUROPE 
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE 
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02Nov1995 ITALY: Mafia-style ambush kills five in southern Italy. 
MONTEBELLO JONICO, Italy, Nov 2 (Reuter) - Gunmen opened fire in a bar and
restaurant late on Wednesday night, killing five people in one of the worst
Mafia-style attacks in Italy's southern Calabria region in recent years.
Investigators said the attack, which took place in the mountain hamlet of
Embrisi, was most likely part of warfare between clans of the 'Ndrangheta,
the local version of the Mafia in the southern mainland region.
Police said three or four gunmen using pistols, rifles and perhaps a
machinegun opened fire through the windows of the family-run bar and
restaurant as the victims were eating inside.
They then entered and continued shooting.
The dead were all men aged between 26 and 54. Two of them died at the scene
and the three others died en route to hospitals.
A sixth man who tried to hide in the bathroom, the son of one of the dead
men, was critically wounded.
Police said some of the victims were involved in the construction business,
which has traditional links to organised crime in southern Italy. At least
one had links to the Iamonte crime family in the Aspromonte area where the
'Ndrangheta is strongest.
Italy's national deputy police chief, Gianni De Gennaro, was due to hold a
meeting with Calabrian police officials to discuss the investigation of what
the Italian media have dubbed the All Saints Day massacre.
November 1, a national holiday in Italy, is the day the Roman Catholic
Church honours all its saints.
The 'Ndrangheta crime group traditionally specialised in kidnappings for
ransom but in recent years has branched out into extortion racket and
international drug trafficking. 
(c) Reuters Limited 1995 
Sources:REUTERS NEWS SERVICE 
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE - WESTERN EUROPE 
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE 
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25Jun1995 ITALY: Italian state delivers fresh blow to Mafia. 
By Keith Weir
ROME, June 25 (Reuter) - The Italian authorities on Sunday hailed the arrest
of suspected Mafia chief Leoluca Bagarella as an important victory in the
war on Cosa Nostra but warned the crime empire had not been defeated.
Bagarella, brother-in-law of jailed Mafia Godfather Salvatore "Toto" Riina
and allegedly one of his heirs at the top of Cosa Nostra, was arrested while
driving alone through the outskirts of the Sicilian capital Palermo on
Saturday evening.
"The arrest of fugitives such as Leoluca Bagarella is very important but the
Cosa Nostra organisation has shown that it is able to recover from such
wounds," Palermo chief prosecutor Giancarlo Caselli said at a news
conference.
"The road ahead remains a long one and there will be some dark days," he
added.
The arrest is the biggest coup for anti-Mafia forces since the detention in
January 1993 of "Boss of Bosses" Riina after almost a quarter of a century
on the run.
Police from the elite DIA Anti-Mafia squad arrested 53-year-old Bagarella on
the same stretch of road where Riina was captured.
Police said that Bagarella, who was driving a small Lancia saloon and was
unarmed, tried to speed away from the police then showed a false driving
licence when stopped. But he subsequently offered little resistance.
Bagarella was born in the Sicilian hilltop town of Corleone, immortalised in
the Hollywood "Godfather" movies. His sister Ninetta is married to Riina.
Italy's deputy police chief Gianni De Gennaro named Bagarella last September
as one of three fugitive lieutenants who had assumed control of Cosa Nostra
after Riina's arrest.
Bagarella, on the run since 1991, has already been sentenced in his absence
to two life sentences for the murders of Palermo police chiefs Boris
Giuliano and Giuseppe Russo in the late 1970s.
Prosecutors allege he helped organise the killing of anti-Mafia prosecutor
Giovanni Falcone, blown up in 1992 by a bomb detonated under the highway as
he drove into Palermo.
They also say he ordered a series of bomb attacks on churches and museums in
Florence, Rome and Milan two years ago. The attacks were regarded as the
Mafia's response to an offensive by the state that had led to the capture of
Riina.
Caselli urged a united front against the Mafia and called for an end to
damaging disputes such as recent controversies over the role of Mafia
"pentiti" (turncoats).
"Rows created out of nothing risk playing into the hands of those we should
be uniting against," he said.
The dispute over the "pentiti" has been heightened by the case of
seven-times prime minister Giulio Andreotti who will go on trial in Palermo
in September on charges he was the Mafia's political protector for at least
14 years.
Andreotti says informers have tried to frame him as part of a Mafia
vendetta.
Interior Minister Giovanni Coronas, appointed earlier this month, publicly
assured Caselli that the state would provide the men and the means to take
on the Mafia.
"The arrest of Bagarella is not an end to the offensive against the Mafia
but fresh motivation and encouragement to continue," Coronas said. 
(c) Reuters Limited 1995 
Sources:REUTERS NEWS SERVICE 
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE - WESTERN EUROPE 
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE 
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24Jun1995 ITALY: Italy celebrates capture of top Mafia boss. 
By Keith Weir
ROME, June 25 (Reuter) - Italy's Mafia-busters were congratulating
themselves on Sunday on the arrest of alleged Mafia chief Leoluca Bagarella,
one of the country's most wanted fugitives.
Police from the elite DIA Anti-Mafia squad arrested 53-year-old Bagarella,
reputed to be one of the leaders of the Sicilian Cosa Nostra crime empire,
as he drove alone in a small car through the island's capital Palermo on
Saturday evening.
DIA deputy director Pippo Micalizio told Italian radio that Bagarella first
tried to speed away from the police then showed a false driving licence. But
he subsequently offered little resistance.
"We had a bit of luck and we managed to arrest one of the top men in Cosa
Nostra, perhaps as things stand today its absolute head," said Micalizio.
"It shows people that these men are not samurais but ordinary individuals
who can be arrested," he added.
The arrest is arguably the biggest coup for the Italian police since the
arrest in January 1993 of "Boss of Bosses" Salvatore "Toto" Riina,
Bagarella's brother-in-law.
"Let's hope that Riina doesn't have too many brother-in-laws," a smiling
Italian President Oscar Luigi Scalfaro told reporters during a state visit
to Brazil.
Palermo mayor Leoluca Orlando, a member of the La Rete (The Network)
anti-Mafia party, said that the success should encourage the state to
redouble its efforts to beat the mob.
"These arrest should be fresh encouragement to press ahead and strike at the
military heads of Cosa Nostra and their political and institutional
reference points," he said.
The country's deputy police chief Gianni De Gennaro named Bagarella last
September as one of the three fugitive lieutenants who had assumed control
of Cosa Nostra after Riina's arrest.
Born in the Sicilian hilltop town of Corleone immortalised in the Hollywood
"Godfather" movies, Bagarella had several previous convictions and had been
on the run since 1991.
Police arrested him in 1979 and two years later prison guards foiled an
attempt to escape across the roof of Palermo's Ucciardone jail.
He was sentenced to four years for criminal association at the first of the
so-called Palermo "maxi-trials" in which about 350 Mafiosi were jailed in
the 1980s.
Released in December 1990, he went to ground a few months later when police
issued a fresh warrant for his arrest.
Prosecutors allege he played an important role in preparing the killing of
anti-Mafia hero Giovanni Falcone, blown up in 1992 by a bomb detonated under
the highway as he drove into Palermo from the city airport.
They say he helped plan a series of bomb attacks on churches and museums in
Florence, Rome and Milan in the summer of 1993. The attacks were regarded as
the Mafia's response to an offensive by the state that had led to the
capture of Riina and other bosses.
Bagarella, whose sister Ninetta is married to Riina, was arrested on the
same stretch of road in the suburbs of Palermo where police captured the
Mafia Godfather in 1993 after almost a quarter of a century on the run. 
(c) Reuters Limited 1995 
Sources:REUTERS NEWS SERVICE 
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE - WESTERN EUROPE 
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE 
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24Jun1995 ITALY: Italian police capture alleged Sicilian Mafia boss. 
By Keith Weir
ROME, June 24 (Reuter) - Police said on Saturday they had arrested suspected
Mafia boss Leoluca Bagarella, one of Italy's most wanted men.
Police from the elite DIA Anti-Mafia squad arrested 53-year-old Bagarella,
reputed to be a leader of the Sicilian Cosa Nostra crime empire, as he drove
unaccompanied through the island's capital Palermo on Saturday evening.
Police said that Bagarella initially attempted to accelerate past police
control then tried to deny his identity. They said he did not offer any
particular resistance.
"We have arrested one of the top men in Cosa Nostra, perhaps as things stand
today the overall head," Pippo Micalizio, deputy director of the DIA, told
Italian radio.
The arrest is the biggest coup for the Italian police in their battle
against the Mafia since the January 1993 arrest of "Boss of Bosses"
Salvatore "Toto" Riina, Bagarella's brother-in-law.
Italian television interrupted the Saturday night diet of variety shows to
announce the capture in special news bulletins.
The country's deputy police chief Gianni De Gennaro named Bagarella last
September as one of the three fugitive lieutenants who had assumed control
of the Mob since Riina was detained.
Bagarella, born in the Sicilian hilltop town of Corleone immortalised in the
Hollywood "Godfather" movies, had several previous convictions and had been
on the run since 1991.
An Italian court in March sentenced Bagarella to life in his absence for the
1979 killing of Boris Giuliano, head of the Palermo police flying squad.
Last February, a warrant was issued for Bagarella's arrest in connection
with a bomb attack on Florence's Uffizi art gallery in May 1993 in which the
building was badly damaged and five people were killed.
"I knew that they were on to him and to some extent I expected this," said
Florence prosecutor Pierluigi Vigna.
"It's a great success for the police."
Bagarella, whose sister Ninetta is married to Riina, was arrested on the
same stretch of road in the suburbs of Palermo where police captured Riina
in 1993 after almost a quarter of a century on the run. 
(c) Reuters Limited 1995 
Sources:REUTERS NEWS SERVICE 
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE - WESTERN EUROPE 
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE 
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08Mar1995 ITALY: MAFIA SENDS BLOODY SIGNAL TO INFORMERS. 
By John Hooper.
ON July 14, 1984, a burly man in dark suit and glasses was aboard a plane
bound for Italy from Brazil. His escorts, one a policeman, one a magistrate,
were to become two of Italy's leading fighters against organised crime:
Gianni de Gennaro and Giovanni Falcone.
As the aircraft carrying the extradited prisoner, Tommaso Buscetta, headed
over the Atlantic, he turned to the policeman and said: "When we arrive,
sir, I shall be telling you and Mr Falcone a couple of things."
On Monday night, Tommaso Buscetta's nephew, Domenico, locked up his shop,
the Esteemed Jewellery in Palermo, and made for a nearby cafe to buy a box
of cakes. He and his wife Mariella then walked to their Audi estate car
which was parked near the junction of Viale Regione Siciliana and Via
Scobar. As he was getting in, a man strolled up and pumped seven 7.65
calibre bullets into him from a pistol.
The murder of Domenico Buscetta was the most recent in a succession of Cosa
Nostra vendetta killings which began even before his uncle turned state's
evidence. It has not only put the spotlight back on Italy's most celebrated
supergrass, but has also raised the uncomfortable question of whether his
decision to break with the Mafia has achieved anything.
Tommaso Buscetta is not so much a Mafia informer as the Mafia informer. He
was the first high-ranking "man of honour" to break the mob's rule of
omerta, or silence, and as such he was the inspiration for a number who have
followed.
None of their evidence, though, has compared with his in scope or authority:
the "couple of things" eventually turned into a complete account of the Cosa
Nostra, its organisation, personnel, traditions, rituals and methods. His
evidence was responsible for the issuing of 465 arrest warrants, which in
turn formed the basis for the so-called maxi-trials which constituted the
biggest blow the Mafia has suffered.
In revenge, the Cosa Nostra leadership ordered the executions of, first, Mr
Falcone and then his heir apparent, Paolo Borsellino, in car bomb attacks in
1992. The subsequent public outcry forced the authorities into a crackdown
which ended in the arrest of the "boss of bosses", Salvatore "The Beast"
Riina, in January 1993.
Riina, for his part, has called the informer a "sewer mouse" - an odd
epithet which was taken by analysts of the godfathers' often weirdly coded
language to mean he was in danger of being crushed by the unforgetting Mafia
"elephant".
No fewer than 10 of Tommasco Buscetta's close relatives have perished or
vanished as a result of his decision to defy the dominant clan within Cosa
Nostra, led by Riina. The victims include Mr Buscetta's brother, a
brother-in-law, two sons, a son-in-law, two nephews and even his
son-in-law's nephews. As if that were not enough, hit men in Florida were
hired to murder his best man and a friend.
Mr Buscetta said yesterday he had not seen his nephew Domenico for 11 years.
"Since making my choice ... I have not wanted to have any contact with my
relatives, precisely in order to keep them away from me, away from
responsibilities which are purely mine."
The fact that a Mafia gunman was able to assassinate an apparently
unprotected relative of its main enemy suggests that the Italian state has
again dropped its guard. With prophetic irony, this point was made by Mr
Buscetta himself on the day his nephew died.
He now lives in the United States under a witness protection programme
agreed with Washington. But he recently returned to Italy, and before
departing relayed his bitter disillusion to the newspaper La Repubblica.
What he had found, he said, was "an immense desire to forget".
"It seems to me that there is no longer the momentum which the authorities
mustered after the deaths of Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, that
there is no longer that conviction which made everyone think the battle
against Cosa Nostra could finally be won."
By his own account, Mr Buscetta joined the Mafia in 1948. He later told the
Palermo assize court: "The recruit is taken to a secluded location, in the
presence of three or more men of honour of the `family', and then the oldest
informs him that the goal [of Cosa Nostra] is to protect the weak and
eradicate abuses. Afterwards, one of the candidate's fingers is pricked and
the blood is spilled onto a sacred image. Then the image is placed in the
hand of the novice and set on fire ..."
Mr Buscetta's involvement with the Mafia followed a characteristically
violent pattern. He embraced wholeheartedly the trappings of membership. His
tinted glasses and - double-breasted suits coincide precisely with popular
conceptions, and even prompted the designers Dolce and Gabanna to create a
gangster-look collection for this year.
But Mr Buscetta continued to pay at least lip service to the selfless ideals
which had been voiced at his initiation, and with which Cosa Nostra has
historically justified itself. In the early 1980s, he appears to have turned
down an opportunity to join Riina's clan at a time when it was wresting
supremacy from its rivals in the last big Mafia war. He has always explained
that decision in terms of the split he believed was taking place between a
traditional "good" Mafia and Riina's new "bad" Mafia.
The murders of recent weeks fit perfectly within the logic of the threat
made by Riina. All the victims were suspected of being potential or actual
informers or belonged to families that were on the losing side in the
struggle that led to the takeover of Riina and his Corleonesi clan.
The fact that a large number of the murders have been carried out in and
around Palermo, the most heavily policed city in Italy, makes the assertion
of control all the more effective and chilling.
As Luciano Violante, the former head of the parliamentary anti-Mafia
commission, remarked yesterday: "It is as if, on one hand, someone wanted to
reassert the primacy of the Corleonesi clan, and, on the other, stage a yet
tougher showdown with the state."
One explanation is that, with Riina himself due to stand trial for Falcone's
murder later this year, his followers wish to send a message that the
"family" remains strong.
But a sudden outburst of violence is also compatible with an assertion of
strength by whoever plans to take over from The Beast. "Riina is almost
certain never to leave prison. The others know, and it is therefore clear
that a problem as to the succession has been opened up," Mr Violante said.
That could push the aspirant or aspirants towards the assassination of
someone far more illustrious than a Palermo jeweller. Within the Mafia, Mr
Violante warned, "it is always the big homicide which endorses the supremacy
of one group over another". 
Sources:GUARDIAN 8/3/95 
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20Feb1995 ITALY: A kiss is just a kiss, but not in the Mafia. 
By Paul Holmes
ROME, Feb 20 (Reuter) - Sicilian Mafia bosses have ordered members to stop
exchanging a ritual kiss and abolished other centuries-old rites to try to
improve secrecy, Italian newspapers reported on Monday.
The reports, many of them illustrated with photographs of Mafia embraces
from the Hollywood movie The Godfather, said investigators had been told
about the new rules by informers.
Police have arrested hundreds of suspected Mafiosi, including alleged "boss
of bosses' Salvatore Riina, in the past three years with the help of
turncoats who have spilled the beans on their former partners in crime.
"The fact is that the turncoat phenomenon has shot through Cosa Nostra like
a red-hot poker. Nobody trusts anybody any more," Corriere della Sera
newspaper said.
The reports said the kiss had been banned along with the ceremonial
swearing-in of new members and their introduction to other "men of honour"
with the ritual words "E la stessa cosa" (He is the same thing).
Il Messaggero said Mafia initiation usually involved a new recruit holding a
burning holy picture while reciting the words: "May I perish in the fire if
I betray my beloved mother."
"The abolition of ritual affiliation points to the birth of a new,
compartmentalised Mafia, made up of tiny cells whose few members are known
only to each respective boss," it said.
Male relatives and close friends often greet each other with a kiss on each
cheek in Italy, particularly in the south.
But, according to informers, the kiss can also signify within the Mafia that
a deal has been sealed.
According to testimony from one leading turncoat, Riina's former bodyguard
Baldassare di Maggio, Riina exchanged such a kiss with Italy's former prime
minister Giulio Andreotti at a secret summit in 1987.
Andreotti, battling charges that he was a full member of the Mafia, denies
he met Riina and calls the kiss claim madness.
The newspaper reports could not be confirmed and one Sicilian writer on the
Mafia, Michele Pantaleone, told Corriere della Sera he understood that the
kiss had gone out of fashion in the Mafia in the mid 1960s.
But senior police officers say they believe the Mafia is reviewing its inner
workings following the blows it has suffered at the hands of turncoats.
"The Mafia has been attacked from the inside and that is something that has
never happened before," said Gianni De Gennaro, a senior police chief who
headed the elite DIA anti-Mafia police unit until late last year.
"It has seen many of its rules violated, rules on which its strength was
founded," he said last week. 
(c) Reuters Limited 1995 
Sources:REUTERS NEWS SERVICE 
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE - WESTERN EUROPE 
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE 
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17Feb1995 ITALY: Turncoat "blows lid" on politics and the Mafia. 
By Paul Holmes
ROME, Feb 17 (Reuter) - When Gioacchino Pennino was arrested last year,
investigators in Sicily saw him as just one of many suspected "men of
honour" they had been seeking for oiling the Mafia's wheels of crime.
Now they believe they are dealing with someone who could lay bare evidence
that Cosa Nostra not only enjoyed ties to sections of the party of power in
Italy for almost 50 years, the Christian Democrats, but actually operated
within it in Sicily.
Pennino, a physician and former Christian Democrat city councillor in the
Sicilian capital, Palermo, is being hailed by prosecutors as Italy's first
"political turncoat" -- the first penitent Mafioso to spill the beans from
inside politics.
They have compared him to Tommaso Buscetta, who a decade ago became the
first big boss to break the Mafia's deadly code of "Omerta" (silence) and
expose the internal workings of the Sicilian mob.
Testimony from Pennino, 57, contributed this week to the arrest of two
former Christian Democrat kingpins on the island, Calogero Mannino, a
minister in six governments, and ex-senator Vincenzo Inzerillo, both on
charges of Mafia links.
It also provided some 1,300 pages of additional evidence which Palermo
prosecutors have submitted in their two-year-long inquiry into Giulio
Andreotti, prime minister seven times and a pillar of post-war Italy.
Andreotti, awaiting a decision on whether he must stand trial, is battling
accusations that he served for more than a decade as the Mafia's chief
political reference point in Rome.
In a defence since echoed by Mannino, he told Reuters in an interview that
the allegations were a tissue of lies linking the Mafia and political
opponents in a plot to punish him for Christian Democrat government.
"This affair has damaged not only me personally but also the good name of
our country," said the 76-year-old life senator.
"One side is a Mafia vendetta for what I did to combat crime...the other is
the wish to finish off everyone who was part of what people now like to call
the "First Republic'."
The Christian Democrats were the mainstay of successive governments for
nearly 50 years until their disgrace in the huge corruption scandal that
toppled Italy's political old guard in general elections last March.
One of their strongholds was Sicily where one leading research institute,
Eurispes, has estimated that the Mafia controls almost one in 10 of the
island's 4.3 million votes.
Crimefighters say the Mafia's iron grip has gradually but substantially
eased over the past 10 years as more and more of its members have broken the
code of silence.
The state's success was highlighted two years ago with the arrest of "boss
of bosses" Salvatore Riina after 23 years on the run following testimony
from his bodyguard and driver, Baldassare di Maggio.
One of the many trials facing Riina, nicknamed "The Beast', is over the
murder in 1992 of judge Giovanni Falcone, the symbol of Italy's war on
organised crime.
"We are not crying victory because that would be stupid and wrong. But I
sense that the Mafia has been seriously weakened," said Gianni De Gennaro, a
senior police chief who headed the elite DIA anti-Mafia police unit until
late last year.
"It has seen many of its rules violated, rules on which its strength was
founded. It has been attacked from the inside."
Many of the leading turncoats, including Buscetta, have also testified
against Andreotti, accusing him of engaging in a trade-off by which the mob
delivered votes in return for lenient treatment by the courts and other
forms of protection.
Two informers say they saw Andreotti at secret Mafia summits, with the most
damning allegation from Di Maggio, who has testified that he witnessed Riina
and Andreotti exchange a kiss of respect on September 20, 1987.
What those erstwhile gangsters have not been able to do is provide
prosecutors with testimony from inside the other part of the alleged
trade-off -- the Christian Democrat party.
The prosecutors now hope Pennino can.
"Pennino has made absolutely unprecedented and disturbing statements," said
Palermo's chief prosecutor Giancarlo Caselli.
"He is the first Mafioso politician to have repented and has provided a
completely new reading of the links between the Mafia and politics from a
position of direct involvement."
According to Pennino's testimony, leaked in the Italian media, Mafia
chieftains were so entrenched in Christian Democrat politics in Sicily that
they had a direct say in the choice of candidates in exchange for getting
the vote out.
One godfather still at large, Riina's perceived successor as "boss of
bosses" Bernardo Provenzano, "seemed to direct the fate of public life in
Palermo", according to Pennino.
The informer, whose father and uncle were both bosses of a Palermo Mafia
clan, was fully accepted into the Mafia in 1975.
A well known doctor in Palermo, he fled Italy early last year to avoid
arrest in an operation against scores of suspected Mafia members among the
city's professional classes.
Pennino was arrested last March in Croatia, extradited and then decided to
cooperate with authorities last September shortly before his expected
release from preventive detention.
Prosecutors say a crisis of conscience tipped the scales.
"He is a man grappling with two sharply conflicting cultures, that of
civilised society and that of the Mafia," said deputy prosecutor Guido Lo
Forte. 
(c) Reuters Limited 1995 
Sources:REUTERS NEWS SERVICE 
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE - WESTERN EUROPE 
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE 
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30Sep1994 ITALY: Mafia Godfather Riina sent for trial. 
By Paul Holmes
ROME, Sept 30 (Reuter) - A court on Friday ordered the Mafia's arrested
Godfather, Salvatore "Toto" Riina, to stand trial with 36 alleged associates
next February for the spectacular murder of investigator Giovanni Falcone.
The decision was reached at the end of preliminary hearings at a special
bunker set up as a courtroom in the city prison in Caltanissetta, central
Sicily.
It was announced as Italy's deputy police chief Gianni De Gennaro told
parliament's anti-Mafia commission in Rome that Riina's control of the mob
had now passed to his three chief lieutenants, all on the run.
The trio -- Bernardo Provenzano, Giovanni Brusca and Leoluca Bagarella --
are among the 37 who were committed for trial by the Caltanissetta court.
Proceedings will open on February 21.
Prosecutors, basing their case on testimony by three turncoats among the
accused, allege the Sicilian Mafia's entire Cupola or ruling commission
plotted to kill Falcone, a national hero for his fight against organised
crime.
The investigating magistrate, his wife Francesca and three police escorts
were blown to pieces in May 1992 when a huge bomb exploded beneath a road
leading from Palermo's airport to the Sicilian capital as their motorcade
went past.
The killing, and the car bomb murder two months later of Falcone's colleague
and friend Paolo Borsellino, outraged Italy and provoked a counter-offensive
that resulted in Riina's arrest in January 1993 after almost 25 years on the
run.
Riina, nicknamed "The Beast" and with a string of previous convictions, is
held in virtual isolation in a specially monitored cell on the remote prison
island of Asinara off Sardinia and moved only for trials.
De Gennaro, head of Italy's elite DIA anti-Mafia police squad until his
recent move, told the anti-Mafia commission that Riina's direct control of
the Mafia had been broken.
"Riina's command of Cosa Nostra is probably being exercised at this moment
by Bagarella, Brusca and Provenzano," he said.
"There are indications that Giovanni Brusca is on his patch but it is an
area that is difficult for investigators to penetrate," De Gennaro said.
"But we got Riina in the end and we'll get them."
Provenzano, nicknamed "Binu the Tractor" because he "mows people down", was
rumoured to be dead until he contacted authorities by letter last April to
name defence lawyers for another trial in which he is involved.
He hails like Riina and Bagarella, brother of Riina's wife, from Corleone,
the hilltop Sicilian town immortalised in Hollywood's "Godfather" movies.
De Gennaro said apparent inactivity by the Mafia should not be taken as
evidence that organised crime was on the retreat.
"There is apparent calm and this is a weak time for the Mafia in several
respects but that does not mean it isn't dangerous," he said. "Cosa Nostra
has never lost control of its territory".
Prosecutors in the Falcone murder case have assembled more than 60,000 pages
of evidence for the trial, which is expected to last for several months.
Investigators carried out sophisticated DNA tests on cigarette butts
discarded by clan members who spent five days waiting on a hill overlooking
the road before detonating the bomb as Falcone and his escort drove past.
They also traced cellular telephone conversations between suspects in the
moments leading to the attack. One conversation, lasting six minutes, ended
at the exact moment of the explosion. 
(c) Reuters Limited 1994 
Sources:REUTERS NEWS SERVICE 
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE - WESTERN EUROPE 
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE 
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26Aug1994 ITALY: Italy cabinet appoints new chief of police. 
ROME, Aug 26 (Reuter) - The Italian government on Friday appointed a new
police chief and top anti-Mafia investigator as part of a major shakeup of
the interior ministry.
Fernando Masone, the chief of police in Rome, replaces Vincenzo Parisi as
Italy's national police chief and Giovanni Verdicchio will succeed Gianni De
Gennaro as head of the elite DIA anti-Mafia police squad.
Interior Minister Roberto Maroni said he appointed the fresh faces in order
to have men whom he trusted by his side.
"I'm tired of staying in the office from nine in the morning until
midnight," he was quoted as telling La Repubblica newspaper. "Now that I
have colleagues I can really trust, maybe I can work a little less."
The appointments, widely leaked in the media this month, were made official
at a cabinet meeting on Friday morning.
Parisi, 63, who served as police chief for seven years, took early
retirement this week.
This year he was drawn into a slush fund scandal involving the SISDE
civilian secret services.
The former police chief, who has denied any wrongdoing, offered to resign in
January after magistrates confirmed he was under investigation in the
scandal.
Masone, 58, Parisi's successor, was head of Rome's criminal investigation
department from 1973-79 when extreme left and right-wing terrorism was rife
in Italy. He has been Rome's chief of police since 1991.
Verdicchio, 59, a former deputy chief of the DIA, will take over as the
country's top anti-Mafia investigator. He replaces De Gennaro who will
become the head of Criminalpol, the main investigative police squad.
Maroni came under fire earlier this month when he first announced that he
would move De Gennaro away from the anti-Mafia job.
Some critics, including several Sicilian magistrates, said at the time they
were opposed to the replacement of De Gennaro because they feared it could
disrupt the war on the Mafia. 
(c) Reuters Limited 1994 
Sources:REUTERS NEWS SERVICE 
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE - WESTERN EUROPE 
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE 
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28Mar1994 ITALY: Mafia planned two election bombs - police sources. 
ROME, March 28 (Reuter) - The Mafia planned to blow up two leading anti-mob
figures in a plot to disrupt Italy's elections, police sources said.
They said police learned from informers of the planned car bomb attacks on
the former chairman of parliament's anti-Mafia commission, Luciano Violante,
and the head of the elite DIA investigation unit, Gianni De Gennaro.
Police late last week doubled their guard on Violante, who confirmed the
discovery of a murder plot against him when he voted in the northern city of
Turin on the first day of the two-day general elections on Sunday. 
(c) Reuters Limited 1994 
Sources:REUTERS NEWS SERVICE 
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE - WESTERN EUROPE 
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE 
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14Oct1993 ITALY: Swiss connection a key to big anti-Mafia swoop. 
By Keith Weir
ROME, Oct 14 (Reuter) - Police arrested about 130 suspected Mafiosi on
Thursday in a nationwide crackdown hailed as the first major cooperative
drive between Switzerland and Italy in the battle against organised crime.
Police issued more than 220 arrest warrants and searched hundreds of
properties across the country at the end of a year-long investigation into
organised crime activites around Italy's financial capital Milan.
They said about 90 of the warrants were served on prisoners already held in
Italian jails during an investigation codenamed "North-South".
Among those held were suspects wanted in connection with 34 murders and
seven kidnappings.
Television reports also said carabinieri (paramilitary police) General
Francesco Delfino had been warned he faced investigation over alleged links
with a Mafia boss as part of the inquiry.
Delfino, a commander in the northwest Piedmont region, has previously served
in the crime-ridden Sicilian capital Palermo. The allegations against him
are based on testimony from Mafia turncoats.
Four magistrates would also be probed over allegations they took bribes in
return for handing out lenient sentences, the reports added.
News reports said that by allowing bank documents to be seized, Switzerland
was for the first time applying the Strasbourg convention on money
laundering and the confiscation of profits earned from crime.
Switzerland ratified the convention last May and the new regulations came
into force for the Swiss last month.
The swoop was largely directed against gangs belonging to the 'Ndrangheta,
the Calabrian version of the Mafia which has dominated much of crime in
Milan's industrial hinterland.
Those arrested were also believed to include members of Palermo's powerful
Madonia crime family.
"This shows that our strategy now allows us to strike against organised
crime in any part of the country," said Gianni De Gennaro, head of the
country's elite DIA anti-Mafia police squad.
The security forces have scored a number of successes in the battle against
the Mafia this year, arresting convicted Mafia Godfather Salvatore "Toto"
Riina in January and following up by putting several of his top allies
behind bars. 
(c) Reuters Limited 
Sources:REUTERS NEWS SERVICE 
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE - WESTERN EUROPE 
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE 
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