Word: borsellino
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Each year, Italians take part in a midsummer ritual to honor the victims of the Mafia and speak out against the scourge of organized crime. From Palermo to Torino, politicians, church leaders and youth groups gather to mark the July 19, 1992, assassination of anti-Mob magistrate Paolo Borsellino, who was killed along with five bodyguards in a meticulously planned car-bombing outside his mother's apartment in the Sicilian capital...
...this year's anniversary, a most unlikely voice spoke out. Salvatore (Toto) Riina, the Mafia's notorious former boss of bosses, has broken his silence from his prison cell near Milan, where he is serving a life sentence for dozens of homicides, including the masterminding of the Borsellino hit and one three months earlier of another crusading Sicilian prosecutor, Giovanni Falcone. (See pictures of life in Italy...
...Riina, who'd led the bloody takeover of the Mafia by the Corleone faction in the early 1980s, had never made more than a passing (and indecipherable) allusion about the crime to the authorities since his arrest in Palermo a year after the Borsellino killing. His longtime partner in crime and successor as capo dei capi, Bernardo Provenzano, has also stayed mum since his capture near Corleone in 2006. Known as Cosa Nostra, the Sicilian Mob has long maintained power on the island (and beyond) with the help of omertà, a vow of silence and absolute refusal to cooperate...
...leading Italian newspapers have reported that in two separate instances over the past few weeks, Riina has weighed in on open questions surrounding the Borsellino assassination. His surprise decision to talk comes as investigators in Caltanissetta, in central Sicily, have reopened a probe into lingering suspicions that members of the Italian intelligence services may have played a role in the July 1992 plot. Riina, communicating in the typically oblique language of Mafiosi, authorized his lawyer to pass on to reporters his claims that in fact the state was involved. Florence-based attorney Luca Cianferoni told La Repubblica newspaper on July...
...Cupola's sway is thought to have faded in importance under the reign of Salvatore (Toto) Riina in the 1980s, when the bloodthirsty boss of bosses wielded a more autocratic hand. The boss board is believed to have rubber-stamped the 1992 assassinations of Falcone and fellow magistrate Paolo Borsellino, but it was at the insistence of Riina, who would be captured the following year...