The jugglers of massacres

Ohhh, ohhh… astonishment continues to accompany – fortunately with ever-diminishing fervour – the sleight of hand performed by bosses and turncoats, those eternal jugglers of Mafia massacres. Having sown death and horror with TNT, they now spout nonsense from that carnival float that some people insist on calling justice.

Reason has been sacrificed on the altar of the sacrosanct ‘search for truth’. Lost or deliberately put into hibernation in the face of the disgraceful spectacle made available to anyone wishing to set up a smear campaign. Instead of exposing the carefully orchestrated contortions of memory, we invoke the right to report the news – that great cloak shielding the pages of newspapers and social media – merely to relay the far-fetched and fabricated accounts of a state witness such as Giovanni Brusca, or the self-serving and misleading statements of a life-imprisoned convict such as Giuseppe Graviano. Cold, dry reporting, no analysis: that’s all there is to it.

Let’s start with Graviano, branded as “completely unreliable” by the Caltanissetta Public Prosecutor’s Office, which explained that it has absolutely no use for the words of the terrorist boss. They are worth nothing.

However, the champions of militant anti-Mafia activism cry scandal, yet stammer when, by reversing the burden of proof, they are asked why on earth anyone should give a platform or credence to the Brancaccio Mafioso. The truth is that it doesn’t matter who says it, but what they say. They want to hear the same old refrain repeated.

The investigation in question is the one at the conclusion of which the public prosecutors in Nisseni requested that the case against Marcello Dell’Utri be dismissed; he was under investigation on charges of being the external instigator of the 1992 bombings. He shared this status with Silvio Berlusconi, who has since passed away. This is hardly news. We’ve lost count of the number of cases opened, dismissed and reopened. All have invariably ended in a dead end. In the height of summer, Graviano took pen and paper and wrote to the judge for preliminary investigations in Caltanissetta. He wants to be heard. The usual old story from Graviano. A waste of time, according to the public prosecutors and also according to Fabio Trizzino, the lawyer representing Paolo Borsellino’s children. Yet another rift has emerged with his uncle Salvatore, the brother of the murdered magistrate, who, on the other hand, can’t wait to hear what Graviano has to say.

There is no need to wait anxiously and with bated breath. Whether this is the usual old story that the boss is trying to pass off as the truth became clear in Florence, where Graviano took the witness stand at the trial of Salvatore Baiardo, a former ice-cream vendor from Omegna in Piedmont and an accomplice of Graviano, who stands accused of slander against Massimo Giletti. In the antechamber of the television studio, Baiardo showed him a photograph which, according to him, depicted Berlusconi in the company of Graviano and Carabinieri General Francesco Delfino. He subsequently backtracked, and thus the charge of slander was levelled at yet another figure in search of an author and, above all, fame. Baiardo, to be clear, is the man who spoke of the proliferation of Borsellino’s ‘red diary’ – photocopied and distributed in who knows how many copies – which ended up in the hands of those who have been using it to blackmail the whole of Italy for decades.

Graviano reiterated what he had already stated in other trials and written in statements distributed here and there in the courtrooms. After making it clear that he had no intention of repenting, he returned to the subject of alleged business dealings between his grandfather and Silvio Berlusconi, of billions invested in ‘Il Cavaliere’s’ companies, and of a private agreement that would certify the arrangement. This matter cannot be dismissed by framing it within the eternal clash between Berlusconi supporters and opponents, which remains and will forever remain a dead end. This is not about taking sides with one of the two factions. Even the Cavaliere’s opponents should realise that what is at stake is the credibility of the justice system and the common good in the pursuit of the truth.

Those who hang on the every word of a mass murderer – celebrating his memoirs, calling for him to be heard and forgetting the horrors of which he is guilty – should know that Graviano is referring to matters that have already been scrutinised by the courts, yet never proven despite years of investigations and court rulings. These old allegations are being trotted out once again in what has turned into yet another trial of Berlusconi (who cannot defend himself because he is dead) and Dell’Utri (who has already stood trial for mafia-related offences and been convicted).

The show must go on, but probably without Graviano, who, at the end of his testimony in Florence, announced that he intends to step back – at least until his next whim. Through his lawyer, he has made it known that he is going through a period of reflection. His usual rambling loquacity has vanished. He is wondering whether it is worth continuing the discussion or cutting off all contact. He refers to “the forces that do not want him to be able to clarify everything he knows and tell all his stories and his truths”.

Here we go again. Here come the men in black, the wildly distorted reports, the powerful figures pulling the strings. So far, there is only one truth, and it must be reiterated, without any ifs or buts, whenever the opportunity arises. Graviano was and remains a bloodthirsty mafioso who killed men, women and children and ordered the murder of Father Pino Puglisi. He has never repented, nor has he distanced himself from Cosa Nostra. On the contrary, he goes about denying that he carried out the massacres. He describes himself as the victim of a plot hatched by others – Berlusconi first and foremost, along with a few turncoats – to frame him. He denies the evidence of his role in the massacres. He lies whilst harbouring who knows what personal vendettas. He has even been put on trial for slander in Reggio Calabria, where he claimed that the hitman Gaetano Grado took part in the murder of the policeman Nino Agostino and his wife Ida Castelluccio. This was refuted by Grado, who proved that he was in prison on the day of the crime. Of course, one could always believe – and it is strange that no one has yet suggested it – that we opened the prison gates for him just long enough for him to murder the policeman who was hunting down the fugitives and his pregnant wife. However, we would be sinking into judicial flat-earthism.

Graviano is a misleader who sends messages. This had already happened in 2016, when he was eavesdropped on in Ascoli Piceno prison whilst talking to Umberto Adinolfi, the Camorra member with whom he shared his daily walk.

He was absolutely furious with Berlusconi, whom he accused of betraying him and letting him rot in prison after he’d been asked to do ‘a favour’. Namely, the massacres, to speed up Il Cavaliere’s rise to power. Graviano knew he was being bugged. He’d seen the workers installing the new CCTV system. “Sono degli spioni,” Graviano told Adinolfi. And yet the Brancaccio boss continued to speak at length.

He continues to speak at length about everything except his ties to the Mafia. He could begin by offering concrete proof of his credibility. For instance, he might explain how he became a father. According to the official record, in 1996 Giuseppe Graviano and his brother Filippo—who had been held under the 41 bis regime since 1994—allegedly managed to smuggle test tubes containing their own semen out of prison. A version he himself denied in his confidences to his exercise yard companion: his wife became pregnant whilst in prison. “We slept in the cell together,” Graviano said. Is that how it happened? Then tell us who helped him.

Given that he discusses investments worth billions, explain how he manages to meet his family’s financial needs. A few years ago, at a petrol station in Palermo, tax investigators found some accounting documents. Five scraps of paper inside a metal box. They contained the initials of names and salary figures. Twenty thousand euros a month for Rosalia Galdi and Francesca Buttitta, the wives of the brothers serving time in a high-security prison.

Where did that money come from, and where does it come from now? Graviano should provide concrete information, rather than denying the judicial evidence of his role in the massacres. Repentance is the only way to turn the page. Only then will his credibility be assessed. Rigorously, without the leniency of the past.

The state is accustomed to ‘making a deal with the devil’. Take Giovanni Brusca, who ordered the strangling and dissolving in acid of little Giuseppe Di Matteo to silence his father, a state witness. He deserved life imprisonment (he cannot even recall the number of people he killed: 100, 150, who knows?) and yet he is a free man. He pressed the remote control, triggering the hell that was Capaci. No life sentence for all this, but a thirty-year sentence. He repented at a historic moment when a deal was needed to combat a Mafia that seemed invincible. Those were the rules of engagement.

The point is that Brusca was juggling the truth even whilst he was cooperating. His statements were full of sensational claims. Instead of calling him to account and reprimanding him, the magistrates rewarded him with leave to spend Christmas with his family.

Brusca, the juggler, knew exactly how and when to say the right thing. It worked: the State was magnanimous towards him, raising the bar for his rewards as high as it could go. The contradictions in his accounts of the period of the massacres were simply glossed over, as if nothing had happened. For example, regarding the ‘papello’, the legendary list of demands that the Corleonesi put forward to the State to stop the bombings. At first, Brusca said that Riina spoke to him about it after the Mafia massacres of ’92. Then he changed his mind. He asked to be summoned again because he had remembered that he’d learnt of it between the Capaci and Via D’Amelio massacres. Which, coincidentally, was the plot of the State-Mafia negotiations – a theory that fell apart in court – according to which Borsellino was killed because he had uncovered the dirty deal.

“Back in my cell with this doubt, I immediately recalled how events had unfolded,” said Brusca, forgetful and without a trace of embarrassment. Yet some judges had warned their colleagues who gave credence to Brusca’s account in its entirety. In their judgements, they dismissed the collaborator’s “many inconsistencies” and “a certain degree of improvisation”. To no avail; the Palermo Public Prosecutor’s Office pressed ahead regardless. Not least because, in the meantime, the charlatan Massimo Ciancimino – son of Don Vito, the mafia-linked mayor of Palermo – had emerged to spin tall tales about the ‘papello’. And Brusca could not wait to begin his account of the ‘unspeakable agreements’, naming Vito Ciancimino and Marcello Dell’Utri.

For years, he explained, he had remained silent out of fear. The matter was far more subtle, and he himself admitted as much, without realising it, when he said that “the objections raised against me by the relevant authorities, particularly magistrates, were intended to help me pinpoint the timing more accurately and jog my memory. And so, by dint of remembering and piecing the details together, I was able to piece together the story of the ‘papello’ and everything else”.

The truth is that, as another judge wrote in one of the trials in which General Mario Mori was acquitted, Brusca had a habit of “embellishing his accounts with sensational details, conjectures and summaries, some of which were confused and difficult to understand”. “This was due to excessive questioning”, which in Brusca’s case “led, at a certain point, to an inevitable mental bias”, wrote the judge who acquitted the former Christian Democrat minister Calogero Mannino.

Now Brusca has resurfaced. Where? At the Baiardo trial, of course, where there is a huge window wide open to let in the accusations that have come out the back door. Baiardo, having gone back on his story about the photo, is alleged to have facilitated the ‘mass-murder pact’ between Cosa Nostra and the then-fledgling Forza Italia. Aggravated aiding and abetting is the key to being able to re-examine the evidence against people like Graviano and Brusca.

The ‘executioner’ of San Giuseppe Jato adds details to the narrative. He recounts that regarding the attacks of ’92 and ’93, “in discussions with Bagarella, we said we would use them as a political tool, as if they had been suggested by the left, in such a way” as to facilitate “Berlusconi, so that they might influence his entry into politics”. Bloodthirsty mafiosi and statesmen, then. This took place in 1994. Then we “sent Berlusconi a veiled threat”, namely “that if he didn’t give us a hand, we would plant more bombs to put him in political difficulty”. As for Berlusconi’s financial and property dealings with the Mafia, he recalls only the gossip among the bosses. He knows nothing of the relationship between Graviano and Berlusconi, save for the rumour he heard from Matteo Messina Denaro. Yet this is a tidbit that fuels astonishment. Graviano had seen a watch worth 500 million lire on Berlusconi’s wrist. These jugglers are at it again; another stage is set, despite the fact that their credibility regarding the links between Berlusconi and the Mafia has been thoroughly undermined in other trials. But as we know, investigations can always be reopened. New days of cheap sensationalism lie ahead.