After the massacres of 1992 (Capaci and via d’Amelio) I decide to ask for the transfer from Turin to Palermo. On December 17, the CSM appoints me head of the prosecutor’s office. I was already “charged”, but Nino Caponnetto motivated me even more, in a meeting between friends in Sariano (Rovigo), telling me with vibrant depth about Falcone and Borsellino, as no one had ever managed to do.
A few days before my departure for Palermo, the Commander of the Piedmont CC informs me that a certain “Balduccio” di Maggio, former driver of Riina, had been stopped in Borgomanero, who claimed he could lead to his arrest. I immediately warned Mori, head of the Ros of Palermo, and Aliquò, the magistrate who held the prosecutor’s office. Then I organize the immediate transfer of Di Maggio to Sicily.
On 15 January 1993 – exactly thirty years ago – Riina was handcuffed by a nucleus of CC of the ROS led by Captain “Ultimo” (Sergio De Caprio). These – already well under way with the investigation – had completed the puzzle with the indications of “Balduccio”, which he had not boasted. I arrive in Palermo to take office on the same day, January 15, 1993. he welcomes me and the news of Riina’s capture explodes like lightning. The head of the “dome”, who has been on the run for more than twenty years, will finally be able to face each other while he is in the “cage” of the detained defendants. I tell myself that Falcone and Borsellino were right: the mafia can be overthrown; as long as you really want to. The capture of Riina is therefore an extraordinary historical success (despite the poisonous appendage of the failure to search the hideout).
Salvatore Riina, known as “Totò u curtu” due to his short stature, was born in Corleone on November 16, 1930 (he will die in Parma prison on November 17, 2017). With him Cosa Nostra turns into a dictatorship founded on terror. Thousands of “dissident” mafiosi are killed or forced to flee. But the same terror was valid on the outside, towards the men of society and the state considered “enemies” by Riina. To preserve his privileges and his power, Riina carries out a frightening sequence of murders of politicians, magistrates, police officers, Carabinieri officers, journalists, men of civil society. A ruthless strategy that culminated in the murder of General-Prefect Dalla Chiesa. Never, in any country in the world, has there been such a massacre. Such a systematic and ferocious beheading of all institutional leaders. Never.
And after the conclusion of the maxi-trial, when for the first time the mafiosi were definitively sentenced to long sentences or life, Riina orders the massacres of Capaci and via D’Amelio in spring-summer 1992 against the hated “responsible”, Falcone and Borsellino. The historic importance of Riina’s capture also lies in the fact that it triggers an effective reaction from the state. The Palermo prosecutor’s office develops, in continuity with Falcone and Borsellino, a judicial strategy based not on the “simple” containment of the emergency, but on an overall vision of the mafia and its system of relations with the economy and politics . The investigations (thanks to the work of the judicial police in all its articulations and the strong support of the Palermo of the “white sheets”) lead to significant successes. After Riina are captured and tried – with sentences of 650 life sentences as well as an infinite number of years in prison – leaders, followers and killers of Cosa Nostra, including very dangerous fugitives of the caliber of Raffaele Ganci, Giuseppe and Filippo Graviano, Leoluca Bagarella, Giovanni Brusca, Pietro Aglieri, Gaspare Spatuzza and dozens of others.
The disruptive consequence is a significant disorientation: both in the mafia population, which is decimated with hundreds of arrests; and on external relations, which record a distance from sectors of society and institutions in the past available to provide support and cover. It seems that Cosa Nostra is finally on the ropes. The state of serious difficulty in which it finds itself is evidenced by the avalanche of men of honor arrested who decide in a very short time to collaborate with the judiciary.
But here’s a script that repeats itself: the state’s response to the mafia is fluctuating, wavering. Always a stop and go anti-mafia. In the wake of sensational crimes, a wave of indignation in public opinion causes a strong reaction from the state. But as soon as the skeletons in the closet of those who do business with the mafia threaten to come to light, silence falls and the mafia is no longer an emergency. In contrast, relationships of substantial coexistence with the mafia are preferred, whose “services” are convenient for many. It also happened for the season that opened with the capture of Riina. But this is another story: that of a cyclical “march of the prawns” that continues up to the present day.