Land of Fires protest in Naples Saturday
(ANSA) - Naples, October 24 - Demonstrators will take to the streets in downtown Naples on Saturday to protest unpoliced fires to burn toxic and illegal waste.
Angelo Ferrillo, president of the Land of Fires association - the group organizing the protest - said that "the burning of toxic waste and illicit disposal-recycling continue undisturbed " despite announced public efforts to fight the so-called ecomafia in the area between Naples and Caserta.
The illegal burning of toxic waste in the area has led to it being dubbed the "land of fires".
With 90 clans and 4,000 affiliates active in the region, the powerful Naples-based Camorra mafia has long infiltrated the rubbish-collection industry and has raked in huge profits even as its illegal dumps and uncontrolled burning of waste and other toxic materials have been blamed for unusually high levels of cancer and other disease linked to pollution that will plague future generations.
The Land of Fires association has asked the Naples prefecture to face sit with them at a table to address how the issue is being tackled. In March, Interior Minister Angelino Alfano said the government was sending 100 military troops to fight the phenomenon.
http://www.ansa.it/english/news/general ... cfcd1.html
Mafia News from Europe
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Mafia News from Europe
Exclusive: Mafia understands bombs pay, says Nino Di Matteo
Magistrate Nino Di Matteo – who is investigating an alleged deal between the Italian state and the Mafia, to bring its violence to an end – has given an exclusive interview to euronews’ Sabrina Pisu.
Italian President Giorgio Napolitano has been called to give evidence at the high-profile trial.
The proceedings began in Bunker hall of Palermo’s Ucciardone prison, where Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino were the judges in the first big anti-Mafia trial in 1986/87. It ended with 19 life sentences, including the bosses Totò Riina and Bernardo Provenzano. In 1992 Falcone and Borsellino paid for the fight against the Mafia with their lives.
Twenty-two years later the boss of bosses Riina issued a death sentence against Di Matteo, who is trying to shine a light on the darkest era of the Mafia violence in Italy.
Sabrina Pisu, euronews: The trial over the state-Mafia negotiations, or rather, the state putting itself on trial. Is the state prepared to accuse itself of such serious crimes?
Nino Di Matteo: ‘‘Our constitutional system is mainly characterised by the fundamental rule of legal equality for all citizens. When tangible elements come to the surface, as they have in the last few years, the state has to have the courage to look into them carefully and bring any responsibility of its representatives into the open.
“This certainly is a unique trial and it concerns an absolutely tragic period in the history of our republic. The trial aims to understand whether in the years between the end of 1991 and 1994 Cosa Nostra used bombs to threaten the state and persuade it to make less repressive choices regarding the Mafia and whether any representatives of the state somehow became go-betweens as a result of Cosa Nostra’s blackmailing and pressure on the state.
“This is a trial in which the representatives of the state are not involved because they negotiated but because they, as we consider in the prosecution hypothesis, acted as go-betweens in the blackmail. I believe that a state and a legal system that aims to be credible should not be afraid to deal with these issues.’‘
euronews: Did the state-Mafia negotiations slow down or increase the bombings?
Di Matteo: There are some definitive sentences issued by the Florence Court of Assizes that describe an objective fact. When Cosa Nostra had the feeling that it was being looked for by representatives of the state, possibly to mediate, rather than pull back, it multiplied its intentions and the intensity of its intentions to carry out bomb attacks.
“At one point the Mafia began to understand that high-level bomb attacks paid off and they were useful because by looking for a counterpart, the state showed that it was beginning to give way. Cosa Nostra, in particular Totò Riina, understood that the bomb strategy could be the right strategy for forcing the state to come to an agreement.
“I believe that history, not only legal history, should teach us that one can never look for any form of dialogue with Cosa Nostra and with Mafia organisations in general because a dialogue with the Mafia would mean acknowledging that it is a counterpart with a structure and a consistency that a Mafia organisation must never have.”
euronews: Does this trial risk running aground in what you call the ‘‘conspiracy of silence’‘ or of being blocked by, again to use your words, the “state’s impenetrable code of silence’‘?
Di Matteo: The investigations and the trial are obviously difficult but the hearings are proceeding properly and very calmly. The court, we the prosecutors and also the lawyers are all studying every aspect very thoroughly. In our opinion, that is according to the public prosecution, during the investigations, not everyone said everything they knew, some people lied and others only started talking about what they knew a long time after the events they had found out about, and many of them only after members of the Mafia, like Spatuzza, or the sons of members of the Mafia, like Massimo Ciancimino, started talking about the state-Mafia negotiations.
“The trial is continuing with all the parties involved in the proceedings working very hard and very thoroughly and with the authoritative direction of the Court of Assizes that wants to find out and assess the facts.
“We hope that everyone who knows, or may know, both in the trial and during the further investigations, which the Palermo prosecutors are continuing to carry out, will step forward and say everything they know.”
euronews: How big is the “trial over the trial”, which is attempting to delegitimise the case for the prosecution?
Di Matteo: “The case for the prosecution and the prosecution hypothesis has been widely and legitimately criticised since the beginning of the investigation. Attacks, however, are different from criticism. We have also had to put up with all sorts of accusations, sometimes instrumental accusations. We are keeping calm because we are aware that our aim is only to try and find out the truth and nobody can tell us that we have violated the rule of law at any time during the investigations or the trial.”
euronews: How does it feel to hear some intellectuals or jurists justify the state-Mafia negotiations in 1992-93 as ‘‘necessary’‘ in a period of bombings on our country?
Di Matteo: “This goes beyond the public prosecutor’s judgement and becomes an ethical type of assessment. I do not think that the state can come to an agreement in any case, for any reason, under any conditions. If it had, if it did or if it was to in the future, it would betray the memory of all those people who have sacrificed their life to oppose the Mafia. I have to mention that from a more objective, historical point of view the state-Mafia negotiations may well have saved the life of some politicians but it caused the death of other Italian citizens.”
euronews: Some people try and delegitimise the trial, saying that it deals with things from the past. But do the state-Mafia negotiations really only concern our country’s past or are they still relevant and do they govern the country’s strongest dynamics?
Di Matteo: “These are facts from the past but if the state did come to an agreement with Cosa Nostra then, and today the state did not have the strength to bring these events out into the open, Cosa Nostra would always be very dangerous for the state because it would have the power to blackmail the institutions. However long ago they occurred, these facts have to be investigated, precisely in order to prevent the Mafia from exercising the terrible power of blackmail, now and in the future.
euronews: Do you fear a new season of bombings?
Di Matteo: “I have no wish to express any judgements or evaluations so I will just make a historical consideration. In the past too, there have been moments when, because many Mafia bosses had been arrested, it was thought that Cosa Nostra was basically a phenomenon of the past. Unfortunately that was when the Mafia always reorganised itself and also increased its power over the State. The history of the Mafia consists of moments of apparent calm, moments of apparent difficulty and then sudden returns to the bombing strategy. I do not believe there are elements leading us to consider the danger of the return to a strategy involving violent attacks against the state as finally passed.”
euronews: Does this mean that Cosa Nostra can still use the threat of bombings, that the state-Mafia negotiations could be opened again or that they have not yet ended?
Di Matteo: “I simply wish to say that it would be a real problem if the state underestimated Cosa Nostra’s capacity to reorganise itself, which it has demonstrated in the past, also in terms of violent attacks on the state.
euronews: Totò Riina wants to kill you. Why is the boss of bosses, author of heinous crimes and bombings like Capaci and Via d’Amelio (the massacres that killed Falcone and Borsellino), afraid of this trial in which he risks a light sentence compared to what he is used to ?
Di Matteo: “The interceptions are there, they are part of the hearing and they can also be listened to in video recordings. The interceptions objectively show how the most dangerous mass murderer in the history of the Mafia in Italy and maybe not only in Italy, would still adopt this approach. As far as the rest is concerned, I would rather not offer any further thoughts and evaluations.”
euronews: Why did you consider it appropriate to call the head of state, Napolitano, to testify as a witness?
Di Matteo: “We explained to the court why calling the head of state to testify is pertinent and relevant. The Court of Assizes considered these arguments to be pertinent and relevant so we will ask the head of state some questions. The witness’s evidence that has been admitted is a letter that counsellor D’Ambrosio sent him on 18 June 2012, a letter in which he expressed that he was afraid of having been used during the period between 1989 and 1993, which are the years involved in the trial, as a “useful scribe to cover unspeakable agreements”. This is the witness’s evidence and the Court of Assizes, not only the public prosecutor, has considered it relevant. Article 205 of the code of criminal procedure states that the president of the republic may testify and states the procedures with which this is to occur. I believe that up to now everything has been carried out by strictly applying the rule of law. This will continue to characterise the activity of the public prosecutors and of the Court of Assizes right until the end of the trial.”
euronews: How did it feel to be accused of having “blackmailed” or “humiliated” the head of state both regarding Napolitano testifying and the random telephone interceptions that involved him?
Di Matteo: “We are totally unconcerned because we know that this is not the truth at all. We have never intended to pursue any aim, regarding anyone, except to look for the truth by strictly applying the rule of law and the code of criminal procedure. We are also proud to have been able to respect the law, and have it respected by our collaborators. Not a single syllable ever leaked from those interceptions, neither before nor after they were destroyed. This shows that the intention has always only been to try and pursue the truth and investigate the facts, the ones that took place in 1992 and ’93, that are connected to our country’s darkest pages, also from the point of view of the attacks by organised crime.
euronews: You have always talked of the need for a change in political approach regarding the question of organised crime.
Di Matteo: Much has been done to attack organised crime but we are now at a point where there will really have to be a breakthrough. We have to attack not only the military aspect of the Mafia but also and above all the collusion that exists between the Mafia and politics, between the Mafia and businesses and between the Mafia and the public authorities.
“In order to achieve this, the political approach should also be different. The fight, for example, against corruption or against Mafia vote-buying, has to be made more incisive. The fight against the Mafia and the fight against corruption cannot be considered as two different things because it is precisely through corruption and other crimes that are typical of the public authorities that the Mafia is able to penetrate the public authorities, the local authorities and the political institutions. If no really effective and strict laws to repress corruption are passed, I am afraid that the relationships between the Mafia and the institutions will never be severed.”
euronews: Have you sometimes had the feeling that you are involved, to use Falcone’s words, in ‘‘a game that is too big’‘ for you?
Di Matteo: The professional experience of a public prosecutor, especially after many years, leads one to an ordinary but unfortunately tangible consideration. The anti-Mafia investigations, and the dangers of contamination, of delegitimisation and of screening become more difficult as one moves from an investigation of traditional Mafia to an investigation concerning the Mafia’s high-level relationships outside the Mafia. This type of investigation, if we want to use Falcone’s words, look out on the big power game in Italy. I agree with what Giovanni Falcone said in a far more authoritative way, which is that the most difficult investigations and trials are the ones in which the public prosecutor has to be even more committed and honest and has to take the risk of antagonising other systems and powers, beyond the Mafia.”
euronews: You said that working this way as a magistrate does not even pay off in terms of one’s career but what does it reward?
Di Matteo: “This is a question that goes beyond the investigations that one performs and the trials one takes part in. As a magistrate I firmly believe that even in assigning positions and directives, in a magistrate’s career the self-governing body of the magistracy have to finally and definitively abandon the criteria of the magistrate’s belonging to any given current. Different criteria should be appreciated, not only being professional and having experience, but also showing independence from other powers. I believe that the function designated by the constitution to the magistracy and to the figure of the magistrate, is that of an independent magistrate who, when making decisions and taking certain initiatives, does not consider opportunity but rather dutifulness. In this sense I believe the independent magistrate should be appreciated and not the one who is near one or another current of the magistracy or even somehow close to the political world.”
euronews: Falcone revealed the loneliness and the attacks even from within the magistracy. Have you ever had this kind of experience?
Di Matteo: “I would rather not answer. Being a magistrate is always wonderful and very exhilarating, precisely because of the role that the magistrate has to play in guaranteeing rights with respect to everyone’s rights. Maybe this is also why, since one is very enthusiastic and in love with the role, that when one is disappointed inside one’s own category, it is particularly hard.
euronews: You have lived with a police escort for twenty years. What makes you keep going?
Di Matteo: “The awareness that I am doing what I wanted to do when I started my law studies, and that I am dealing with things that I was enthusiastic about when I was a simple student.”
euronews: Is it possible, as Falcone and Borsellino said, not to let oneself be conditioned by fear?
Di Matteo: “It was precisely Paolo Borsellino who said that it is not possible to think that a magistrate is not afraid at certain times. The phrase that Borsellino said that I think about and remember because I find it very moving, is that courage does not consist of not being afraid but in making the consciousness prevail that one is moving forward with one’s head high, without letting oneself be conditioned. A magistrate who let himself be conditioned even by the fear of retaliation or revenge against him could not perform a magistrate’s work.”
http://www.euronews.com/2014/10/28/pros ... bombs-pay/
Magistrate Nino Di Matteo – who is investigating an alleged deal between the Italian state and the Mafia, to bring its violence to an end – has given an exclusive interview to euronews’ Sabrina Pisu.
Italian President Giorgio Napolitano has been called to give evidence at the high-profile trial.
The proceedings began in Bunker hall of Palermo’s Ucciardone prison, where Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino were the judges in the first big anti-Mafia trial in 1986/87. It ended with 19 life sentences, including the bosses Totò Riina and Bernardo Provenzano. In 1992 Falcone and Borsellino paid for the fight against the Mafia with their lives.
Twenty-two years later the boss of bosses Riina issued a death sentence against Di Matteo, who is trying to shine a light on the darkest era of the Mafia violence in Italy.
Sabrina Pisu, euronews: The trial over the state-Mafia negotiations, or rather, the state putting itself on trial. Is the state prepared to accuse itself of such serious crimes?
Nino Di Matteo: ‘‘Our constitutional system is mainly characterised by the fundamental rule of legal equality for all citizens. When tangible elements come to the surface, as they have in the last few years, the state has to have the courage to look into them carefully and bring any responsibility of its representatives into the open.
“This certainly is a unique trial and it concerns an absolutely tragic period in the history of our republic. The trial aims to understand whether in the years between the end of 1991 and 1994 Cosa Nostra used bombs to threaten the state and persuade it to make less repressive choices regarding the Mafia and whether any representatives of the state somehow became go-betweens as a result of Cosa Nostra’s blackmailing and pressure on the state.
“This is a trial in which the representatives of the state are not involved because they negotiated but because they, as we consider in the prosecution hypothesis, acted as go-betweens in the blackmail. I believe that a state and a legal system that aims to be credible should not be afraid to deal with these issues.’‘
euronews: Did the state-Mafia negotiations slow down or increase the bombings?
Di Matteo: There are some definitive sentences issued by the Florence Court of Assizes that describe an objective fact. When Cosa Nostra had the feeling that it was being looked for by representatives of the state, possibly to mediate, rather than pull back, it multiplied its intentions and the intensity of its intentions to carry out bomb attacks.
“At one point the Mafia began to understand that high-level bomb attacks paid off and they were useful because by looking for a counterpart, the state showed that it was beginning to give way. Cosa Nostra, in particular Totò Riina, understood that the bomb strategy could be the right strategy for forcing the state to come to an agreement.
“I believe that history, not only legal history, should teach us that one can never look for any form of dialogue with Cosa Nostra and with Mafia organisations in general because a dialogue with the Mafia would mean acknowledging that it is a counterpart with a structure and a consistency that a Mafia organisation must never have.”
euronews: Does this trial risk running aground in what you call the ‘‘conspiracy of silence’‘ or of being blocked by, again to use your words, the “state’s impenetrable code of silence’‘?
Di Matteo: The investigations and the trial are obviously difficult but the hearings are proceeding properly and very calmly. The court, we the prosecutors and also the lawyers are all studying every aspect very thoroughly. In our opinion, that is according to the public prosecution, during the investigations, not everyone said everything they knew, some people lied and others only started talking about what they knew a long time after the events they had found out about, and many of them only after members of the Mafia, like Spatuzza, or the sons of members of the Mafia, like Massimo Ciancimino, started talking about the state-Mafia negotiations.
“The trial is continuing with all the parties involved in the proceedings working very hard and very thoroughly and with the authoritative direction of the Court of Assizes that wants to find out and assess the facts.
“We hope that everyone who knows, or may know, both in the trial and during the further investigations, which the Palermo prosecutors are continuing to carry out, will step forward and say everything they know.”
euronews: How big is the “trial over the trial”, which is attempting to delegitimise the case for the prosecution?
Di Matteo: “The case for the prosecution and the prosecution hypothesis has been widely and legitimately criticised since the beginning of the investigation. Attacks, however, are different from criticism. We have also had to put up with all sorts of accusations, sometimes instrumental accusations. We are keeping calm because we are aware that our aim is only to try and find out the truth and nobody can tell us that we have violated the rule of law at any time during the investigations or the trial.”
euronews: How does it feel to hear some intellectuals or jurists justify the state-Mafia negotiations in 1992-93 as ‘‘necessary’‘ in a period of bombings on our country?
Di Matteo: “This goes beyond the public prosecutor’s judgement and becomes an ethical type of assessment. I do not think that the state can come to an agreement in any case, for any reason, under any conditions. If it had, if it did or if it was to in the future, it would betray the memory of all those people who have sacrificed their life to oppose the Mafia. I have to mention that from a more objective, historical point of view the state-Mafia negotiations may well have saved the life of some politicians but it caused the death of other Italian citizens.”
euronews: Some people try and delegitimise the trial, saying that it deals with things from the past. But do the state-Mafia negotiations really only concern our country’s past or are they still relevant and do they govern the country’s strongest dynamics?
Di Matteo: “These are facts from the past but if the state did come to an agreement with Cosa Nostra then, and today the state did not have the strength to bring these events out into the open, Cosa Nostra would always be very dangerous for the state because it would have the power to blackmail the institutions. However long ago they occurred, these facts have to be investigated, precisely in order to prevent the Mafia from exercising the terrible power of blackmail, now and in the future.
euronews: Do you fear a new season of bombings?
Di Matteo: “I have no wish to express any judgements or evaluations so I will just make a historical consideration. In the past too, there have been moments when, because many Mafia bosses had been arrested, it was thought that Cosa Nostra was basically a phenomenon of the past. Unfortunately that was when the Mafia always reorganised itself and also increased its power over the State. The history of the Mafia consists of moments of apparent calm, moments of apparent difficulty and then sudden returns to the bombing strategy. I do not believe there are elements leading us to consider the danger of the return to a strategy involving violent attacks against the state as finally passed.”
euronews: Does this mean that Cosa Nostra can still use the threat of bombings, that the state-Mafia negotiations could be opened again or that they have not yet ended?
Di Matteo: “I simply wish to say that it would be a real problem if the state underestimated Cosa Nostra’s capacity to reorganise itself, which it has demonstrated in the past, also in terms of violent attacks on the state.
euronews: Totò Riina wants to kill you. Why is the boss of bosses, author of heinous crimes and bombings like Capaci and Via d’Amelio (the massacres that killed Falcone and Borsellino), afraid of this trial in which he risks a light sentence compared to what he is used to ?
Di Matteo: “The interceptions are there, they are part of the hearing and they can also be listened to in video recordings. The interceptions objectively show how the most dangerous mass murderer in the history of the Mafia in Italy and maybe not only in Italy, would still adopt this approach. As far as the rest is concerned, I would rather not offer any further thoughts and evaluations.”
euronews: Why did you consider it appropriate to call the head of state, Napolitano, to testify as a witness?
Di Matteo: “We explained to the court why calling the head of state to testify is pertinent and relevant. The Court of Assizes considered these arguments to be pertinent and relevant so we will ask the head of state some questions. The witness’s evidence that has been admitted is a letter that counsellor D’Ambrosio sent him on 18 June 2012, a letter in which he expressed that he was afraid of having been used during the period between 1989 and 1993, which are the years involved in the trial, as a “useful scribe to cover unspeakable agreements”. This is the witness’s evidence and the Court of Assizes, not only the public prosecutor, has considered it relevant. Article 205 of the code of criminal procedure states that the president of the republic may testify and states the procedures with which this is to occur. I believe that up to now everything has been carried out by strictly applying the rule of law. This will continue to characterise the activity of the public prosecutors and of the Court of Assizes right until the end of the trial.”
euronews: How did it feel to be accused of having “blackmailed” or “humiliated” the head of state both regarding Napolitano testifying and the random telephone interceptions that involved him?
Di Matteo: “We are totally unconcerned because we know that this is not the truth at all. We have never intended to pursue any aim, regarding anyone, except to look for the truth by strictly applying the rule of law and the code of criminal procedure. We are also proud to have been able to respect the law, and have it respected by our collaborators. Not a single syllable ever leaked from those interceptions, neither before nor after they were destroyed. This shows that the intention has always only been to try and pursue the truth and investigate the facts, the ones that took place in 1992 and ’93, that are connected to our country’s darkest pages, also from the point of view of the attacks by organised crime.
euronews: You have always talked of the need for a change in political approach regarding the question of organised crime.
Di Matteo: Much has been done to attack organised crime but we are now at a point where there will really have to be a breakthrough. We have to attack not only the military aspect of the Mafia but also and above all the collusion that exists between the Mafia and politics, between the Mafia and businesses and between the Mafia and the public authorities.
“In order to achieve this, the political approach should also be different. The fight, for example, against corruption or against Mafia vote-buying, has to be made more incisive. The fight against the Mafia and the fight against corruption cannot be considered as two different things because it is precisely through corruption and other crimes that are typical of the public authorities that the Mafia is able to penetrate the public authorities, the local authorities and the political institutions. If no really effective and strict laws to repress corruption are passed, I am afraid that the relationships between the Mafia and the institutions will never be severed.”
euronews: Have you sometimes had the feeling that you are involved, to use Falcone’s words, in ‘‘a game that is too big’‘ for you?
Di Matteo: The professional experience of a public prosecutor, especially after many years, leads one to an ordinary but unfortunately tangible consideration. The anti-Mafia investigations, and the dangers of contamination, of delegitimisation and of screening become more difficult as one moves from an investigation of traditional Mafia to an investigation concerning the Mafia’s high-level relationships outside the Mafia. This type of investigation, if we want to use Falcone’s words, look out on the big power game in Italy. I agree with what Giovanni Falcone said in a far more authoritative way, which is that the most difficult investigations and trials are the ones in which the public prosecutor has to be even more committed and honest and has to take the risk of antagonising other systems and powers, beyond the Mafia.”
euronews: You said that working this way as a magistrate does not even pay off in terms of one’s career but what does it reward?
Di Matteo: “This is a question that goes beyond the investigations that one performs and the trials one takes part in. As a magistrate I firmly believe that even in assigning positions and directives, in a magistrate’s career the self-governing body of the magistracy have to finally and definitively abandon the criteria of the magistrate’s belonging to any given current. Different criteria should be appreciated, not only being professional and having experience, but also showing independence from other powers. I believe that the function designated by the constitution to the magistracy and to the figure of the magistrate, is that of an independent magistrate who, when making decisions and taking certain initiatives, does not consider opportunity but rather dutifulness. In this sense I believe the independent magistrate should be appreciated and not the one who is near one or another current of the magistracy or even somehow close to the political world.”
euronews: Falcone revealed the loneliness and the attacks even from within the magistracy. Have you ever had this kind of experience?
Di Matteo: “I would rather not answer. Being a magistrate is always wonderful and very exhilarating, precisely because of the role that the magistrate has to play in guaranteeing rights with respect to everyone’s rights. Maybe this is also why, since one is very enthusiastic and in love with the role, that when one is disappointed inside one’s own category, it is particularly hard.
euronews: You have lived with a police escort for twenty years. What makes you keep going?
Di Matteo: “The awareness that I am doing what I wanted to do when I started my law studies, and that I am dealing with things that I was enthusiastic about when I was a simple student.”
euronews: Is it possible, as Falcone and Borsellino said, not to let oneself be conditioned by fear?
Di Matteo: “It was precisely Paolo Borsellino who said that it is not possible to think that a magistrate is not afraid at certain times. The phrase that Borsellino said that I think about and remember because I find it very moving, is that courage does not consist of not being afraid but in making the consciousness prevail that one is moving forward with one’s head high, without letting oneself be conditioned. A magistrate who let himself be conditioned even by the fear of retaliation or revenge against him could not perform a magistrate’s work.”
http://www.euronews.com/2014/10/28/pros ... bombs-pay/
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Dellacroce
- Straightened out
- Posts: 305
- Joined: Sun Oct 26, 2014 3:51 am
Re: Mafia News from Europe
Provenzano mentally unfit for trial
Ex-Mafia boss of bosses reported in serious condition
(ANSA) - Palermo, November 10 - Ex-Mafia boss of bosses Bernardo Provenzano is unfit to stand trial, a court ruled on Monday after a medical check-up established his health had deteriorated.Provenzano, 81, is on trial in Palermo on charges of extortion against a firm in Agrigento.
The trial was suspended and adjourned to June 2015 when a new check-up will determine whether he is mentally fit to stand trial.
Provenzano is suffering from Parkinson's and related disorders.
The former Cosa Nostra chief was rushed to hospital earlier this year after he suffered from neurological problems shortly after he was transferred from Parma to Milan's Opera prison.
Arrested in 2006 after 43 years on the run, Provenzano has been subjected to the 41-bis treatment for Italy's most dangerous criminals. The ex-mafia chief, once nicknamed the 'Bulldozer' because of the way he "mowed down" rivals, is serving life for several murders including ordering fatal bomb attacks on anti-mafia prosecutors Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino in 1992.
http://www.ansa.it/english/news/general ... eb6cb.html
Ex-Mafia boss of bosses reported in serious condition
(ANSA) - Palermo, November 10 - Ex-Mafia boss of bosses Bernardo Provenzano is unfit to stand trial, a court ruled on Monday after a medical check-up established his health had deteriorated.Provenzano, 81, is on trial in Palermo on charges of extortion against a firm in Agrigento.
The trial was suspended and adjourned to June 2015 when a new check-up will determine whether he is mentally fit to stand trial.
Provenzano is suffering from Parkinson's and related disorders.
The former Cosa Nostra chief was rushed to hospital earlier this year after he suffered from neurological problems shortly after he was transferred from Parma to Milan's Opera prison.
Arrested in 2006 after 43 years on the run, Provenzano has been subjected to the 41-bis treatment for Italy's most dangerous criminals. The ex-mafia chief, once nicknamed the 'Bulldozer' because of the way he "mowed down" rivals, is serving life for several murders including ordering fatal bomb attacks on anti-mafia prosecutors Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino in 1992.
http://www.ansa.it/english/news/general ... eb6cb.html
-
Dellacroce
- Straightened out
- Posts: 305
- Joined: Sun Oct 26, 2014 3:51 am
Re: Mafia News from Europe
Camorra boss allegedly had talks with Italian secret service
Meetings aimed at ending violence between rival mafiosi
(ANSA) - Naples, November 21 - The Italian secret service allegedly met with the Camorra's Casalesi clan to try to negotiate an end to mafia violence several years ago, Italian media outlets reported Friday.
The meeting with representatives of Casalesi boss Antonio Iovine would have led to a pact giving him an advantage over rival boss Giuseppe Setola, according to Italian media reports.
Two former mafiosi turned State witnesses have said the meeting occurred between 2008 and 2009, during a time when Iovine was on the run and violence had flared, with judges possible targets.
The reports of such a meeting have triggered an investigation.
According to the media reports, negotiations fell through when government agents rejected Iovine's request to have his wife freed from prison and to have more freedom in his territory of operations.
http://www.ansa.it/english/news/general ... a08c3.html
Meetings aimed at ending violence between rival mafiosi
(ANSA) - Naples, November 21 - The Italian secret service allegedly met with the Camorra's Casalesi clan to try to negotiate an end to mafia violence several years ago, Italian media outlets reported Friday.
The meeting with representatives of Casalesi boss Antonio Iovine would have led to a pact giving him an advantage over rival boss Giuseppe Setola, according to Italian media reports.
Two former mafiosi turned State witnesses have said the meeting occurred between 2008 and 2009, during a time when Iovine was on the run and violence had flared, with judges possible targets.
The reports of such a meeting have triggered an investigation.
According to the media reports, negotiations fell through when government agents rejected Iovine's request to have his wife freed from prison and to have more freedom in his territory of operations.
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Re: Mafia News from Europe
Italian police seize Mafia boss's assets worth millions of euros: Is this the end of the line for Matteo Messina Denaro?
He’s been on the run for more than 20 years. But, as police seize millions of euros worth of his assets, it looks like time is finally running out for vicious Cosa Nostra leader Matteo Messina Denaro. Michael Day reports from Rome
Rome
The noose tightens around the last great Cosa Nostra kingpin to evade justice. Yesterday, after investigators seized prized olive groves in Sicily worth €20m (£15.9m), it was hoped the “Boss of Bosses” could finally be brought to book.
Matteo Messina Denaro has been on the run for more than 20 years and was convicted in his absence for the 1993 bomb attacks that killed 10 people in Rome, Florence and Milan.
But after leading the raid on the Fountain of Gold olive business in Trapani, Palermo’s financial police said they were getting closer to the last big fish of Cosa Nostra still on the run. “Seizing assets remains the main way to fight the Mafia,” said provincial commander Giancarlo Trotta. “We do this by using all the expertise we’ve gained in recent years.”
Wire taps obtained by prosecutors suggest the profits from this olive oil producer have been used to directly fund Messina Denaro while he hides out from the authorities – probably using some of the money to buy the complicity of malleable public officials.
Nominally, the olive business is owned by two brothers from the village of Campobello di Mazara. But investigators were able to establish its links to one of Messina Denaro’s right-hand men, the jailed mobster Françesco Luppino, the Italian press reported.
Messina Denaro, 52, the nearest thing the Sicily Mafia has left to a Boss of Bosses, has defied the best efforts of police and magistrates to hunt him down. But experts say he is watching closely as investigators inch ever closer and dismantle his financial empire. Many believe he is he is holed up in Western Sicily, quite possibly in his home town of Castelvetrano,
In April last year a court in Trapani ordered record assets of €1.3bn to be seized from Sicily’s “king of wind (power)” Vito Nicastri. But it was Matteo Messina Denaro, who loomed large behind the vast wealth, including 43 companies and 98 properties, say police and magistrates.
In 2010 it emerged the Cosa Nostra was attempting to cream off millions of euros from both the Italian government and the European Union, by snatching the generous grants on offer for investment in wind power – and move into respectable green business.
Over the past decade, thanks to generous subsidies, wind farms in Italy have proliferated at a rate of 20 per cent per year, and the Sicilian Mafia soon plugged into this new source of income.
Italian investigators say that Nicastri had built up the huge alternative energy business on the behest of the Cosa Nostra boss Messina Denaro.
Messina Denaro’s sister Patrizia is arrested in 2013 Messina Denaro’s sister Patrizia is arrested in 2013 (Corbis)
In addition to halting the giant eco-scam, Italian prosecutors said the seizure in 2013 of 66 bank accounts, as well as property and businesses, was another body blow to Cosa Nostra’s leadership, which was already reeling from dozens of high-profile arrests in the past 10 years. The assets grab was part of investigators’ “scorched earth” policy, which was aimed at draining Messina Denaro’s resources and exposing him. Assets linked to the Sicilian Mafia’s most-wanted fugitive have also been seized in Lazio Calabria and Lombardy.
Messina Denaro, nicknamed “Diabolik” after a cult Italian comic strip criminal, earned a reputation for brutality by murdering a rival Trapani boss and strangling his girlfriend who was three months pregnant.
He was born in to a high-ranking Cosa Nostra family and began using fire arms at the age of 14. Four years later he committed his first murder. He is believed to have told a friend: “With the people I’ve killed, you could fill a graveyard.” He is also reputed to be a lover of fast cars and beautiful women, and in his younger years a fan of Versace clothes and Rolex watches.
He became the No 1 boss following the capture of Palermo mobster Salvatore Lo Piccolo in November 2007.
Investigators believe, however, that following the backlash prompted by the Mafia’s bombing campaign in the early 1990s, and due to internal divisions between clans in Palermo and those in the West of Sicily, Messina Denaro has probably never had the reach and authority of his predecessor and mentor Totó Riina.
And like so many Mafia bosses, his most-wanted status has severely limited his ability to spend his ill-gotten gains and indulge his passions. In March this year, the Italian authorities launched a new photokit image of Messina Denaro assuming him to be heavier set than before and now with a receding hairline, to step up the pressure.
The magistrates themselves have been accused of errors, however, which it is alleged, have helped Messina Denaro evade capture.
In June 2013, the judiciary’s CSM self-governing body slated Palermo’s chief prosecutor Francesco Messineo for not allowing the circulation of information within the prosecutor’s office and said this “lack of coordination was behind the failure to capture the fugitive”.
But December last year police in Sicily made a series of key arrests, including the mobster’s sister. Patrizia Messina Denaro was led away after investigators claimed wire taps showed she had been in contact with her fugitive brother, and played a key role in transmitting his directives to other mobsters.
This led Giuseppe D’Agata, the head of the Palermo outpost of the Italian interior ministry-run anti-Mafia task force, the DIA, to say: “Soon, Messina Denaro will have nothing left around him.”
Il Sole 24 Ore newspaper predicted yesterday that for the last great Cosa Nostra boss: “The end of the line is now imminent
He’s been on the run for more than 20 years. But, as police seize millions of euros worth of his assets, it looks like time is finally running out for vicious Cosa Nostra leader Matteo Messina Denaro. Michael Day reports from Rome
Rome
The noose tightens around the last great Cosa Nostra kingpin to evade justice. Yesterday, after investigators seized prized olive groves in Sicily worth €20m (£15.9m), it was hoped the “Boss of Bosses” could finally be brought to book.
Matteo Messina Denaro has been on the run for more than 20 years and was convicted in his absence for the 1993 bomb attacks that killed 10 people in Rome, Florence and Milan.
But after leading the raid on the Fountain of Gold olive business in Trapani, Palermo’s financial police said they were getting closer to the last big fish of Cosa Nostra still on the run. “Seizing assets remains the main way to fight the Mafia,” said provincial commander Giancarlo Trotta. “We do this by using all the expertise we’ve gained in recent years.”
Wire taps obtained by prosecutors suggest the profits from this olive oil producer have been used to directly fund Messina Denaro while he hides out from the authorities – probably using some of the money to buy the complicity of malleable public officials.
Nominally, the olive business is owned by two brothers from the village of Campobello di Mazara. But investigators were able to establish its links to one of Messina Denaro’s right-hand men, the jailed mobster Françesco Luppino, the Italian press reported.
Messina Denaro, 52, the nearest thing the Sicily Mafia has left to a Boss of Bosses, has defied the best efforts of police and magistrates to hunt him down. But experts say he is watching closely as investigators inch ever closer and dismantle his financial empire. Many believe he is he is holed up in Western Sicily, quite possibly in his home town of Castelvetrano,
In April last year a court in Trapani ordered record assets of €1.3bn to be seized from Sicily’s “king of wind (power)” Vito Nicastri. But it was Matteo Messina Denaro, who loomed large behind the vast wealth, including 43 companies and 98 properties, say police and magistrates.
In 2010 it emerged the Cosa Nostra was attempting to cream off millions of euros from both the Italian government and the European Union, by snatching the generous grants on offer for investment in wind power – and move into respectable green business.
Over the past decade, thanks to generous subsidies, wind farms in Italy have proliferated at a rate of 20 per cent per year, and the Sicilian Mafia soon plugged into this new source of income.
Italian investigators say that Nicastri had built up the huge alternative energy business on the behest of the Cosa Nostra boss Messina Denaro.
Messina Denaro’s sister Patrizia is arrested in 2013 Messina Denaro’s sister Patrizia is arrested in 2013 (Corbis)
In addition to halting the giant eco-scam, Italian prosecutors said the seizure in 2013 of 66 bank accounts, as well as property and businesses, was another body blow to Cosa Nostra’s leadership, which was already reeling from dozens of high-profile arrests in the past 10 years. The assets grab was part of investigators’ “scorched earth” policy, which was aimed at draining Messina Denaro’s resources and exposing him. Assets linked to the Sicilian Mafia’s most-wanted fugitive have also been seized in Lazio Calabria and Lombardy.
Messina Denaro, nicknamed “Diabolik” after a cult Italian comic strip criminal, earned a reputation for brutality by murdering a rival Trapani boss and strangling his girlfriend who was three months pregnant.
He was born in to a high-ranking Cosa Nostra family and began using fire arms at the age of 14. Four years later he committed his first murder. He is believed to have told a friend: “With the people I’ve killed, you could fill a graveyard.” He is also reputed to be a lover of fast cars and beautiful women, and in his younger years a fan of Versace clothes and Rolex watches.
He became the No 1 boss following the capture of Palermo mobster Salvatore Lo Piccolo in November 2007.
Investigators believe, however, that following the backlash prompted by the Mafia’s bombing campaign in the early 1990s, and due to internal divisions between clans in Palermo and those in the West of Sicily, Messina Denaro has probably never had the reach and authority of his predecessor and mentor Totó Riina.
And like so many Mafia bosses, his most-wanted status has severely limited his ability to spend his ill-gotten gains and indulge his passions. In March this year, the Italian authorities launched a new photokit image of Messina Denaro assuming him to be heavier set than before and now with a receding hairline, to step up the pressure.
The magistrates themselves have been accused of errors, however, which it is alleged, have helped Messina Denaro evade capture.
In June 2013, the judiciary’s CSM self-governing body slated Palermo’s chief prosecutor Francesco Messineo for not allowing the circulation of information within the prosecutor’s office and said this “lack of coordination was behind the failure to capture the fugitive”.
But December last year police in Sicily made a series of key arrests, including the mobster’s sister. Patrizia Messina Denaro was led away after investigators claimed wire taps showed she had been in contact with her fugitive brother, and played a key role in transmitting his directives to other mobsters.
This led Giuseppe D’Agata, the head of the Palermo outpost of the Italian interior ministry-run anti-Mafia task force, the DIA, to say: “Soon, Messina Denaro will have nothing left around him.”
Il Sole 24 Ore newspaper predicted yesterday that for the last great Cosa Nostra boss: “The end of the line is now imminent