Italian mafia, two judges change history

FLORENCE, ITALY – On May 23, 2021, Italy remembered the barbaric killing of the anti-mafia judge Giovani Falcone, which took place 30 years ago, in 1992. A few months later his successor Paolo Borsellino was killed as well. On May 27 the country will remember the via dei Georgofili bombing, the terrorist attack carried out by the Sicilian Mafia in 1993 in Florence, Italy. These are three important moments in the history of Italy that can still teach a lot today, especially to the new generations.

From his office in the Palace of Justice in Palermo, Sicily, Falcone spent most of his professional life trying to overthrow the power of the Sicilian Mafia. After a long and distinguished career, culminating in the Maxi Trial in 1986–1987, on 23 May 1992, Falcone was assassinated by the Corleonesi Mafia in the Capaci bombing, on the A29 motorway near the town of Capaci.

In 1992 Italy was in a democratic chaos, because the political parties that had governed it since the Second World War were dissolving under the weight of corruption. In particular, an investigation born in the Milan Public Prosecutor’s Office, called Mani Pulite (clean hands), was showing to the citizens the illegal acts of the political parties, for this reason the trust of Italians in that political system had collapsed.

Even in the rest of the world, something was changing: in December 1991 the Soviet Union dissolved and the “end of communism” that had begun with the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989 was accomplished.

In Italy the mafia was under attack: in the 80s the anti-mafia pool, which also included Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, took part in the Maxi-trial, which led to the conviction of 360 defendants with a total of 2.665 years in prison.

To reinforce the fight against the mafia, the National Anti-Mafia Prosecutor’s Office was about to be born: Giovanni Falcone was one of the favorite candidates to fill the role of chief prosecutor. The mafia would no longer be fought only in some areas, but nationally.

The instigator of the Capaci massacre, which costed Falcone’s life, was Totò Riina. With that massacre, he wanted to show that his family, the Corleonesi, had the control of the Italian mafia.

The Country and Parliament were shocked by the Capaci massacre. The day after Falcone’s death Oscar Luigi Scalfaro was elected as president of the Republic. The political parties finally found an agreement after 15 attempts.

The first words of the new president of the Republic were against the mafia, but war was not over: in July 1992 Paolo Borsellino was killed. The following year, bombs were placed in Milan, Rome and Florence.

In Florence the bomb was positioned in via dei Georgofili, next to the Uffizi, where five people died, including Nadia Nencioni (9 years old) and Caterina Nencioni (50 days old). The other victims of the large explosion were Angela Fiume (36 years old), employee and caretaker of the Accademia, her husband Fabrizio Nencioni (39 years old), policeman and Dario Capolicchio (22 years old), a junior student at the architecture class at the university. This was the last major attack, because Totò Riina was already in prison (arrested in January 1993).

Even today, the mafia is a criminal organization with a system of power based on the social consensus and on the population control against the democratic state. The devotion of Giovanni Falcone has to inspire the new political generation to continue the fight against criminality.