IT’S A FAMILY AFFAIR

“He who is silent and bows his head dies every time he does so.  He who speaks aloud and walks with his head held high dies only once.”    

Yesterday was the 27^th anniversary of the terrorist assassination of Giovanni Falcone, a judge and prosecuting magistrate who spent most of his professional life battling the Sicilian Mafia.  Falcone is best known for his investigation and prosecution of 474 Mafia figures in a 2-year-long trial called the Maxiprocesso, which was held in a specially constructed, secure bunker next to the Ucciardone, the old Bourbon prison in Palermo.  The trial, considered to be the most significant trial ever against the Sicilian Mafia as well as the biggest criminal trial in world history, began on February 10, 1986 and ended on December 16, 1987.  There were 360 convictions, including 119 in absentia. 

One of the bosses convicted in absentia was Salvatore “Totò ”Riina, the head of the Corleone crime family and the person who ordered Falcone’s murder.  Here he is as a young thug.

Falcone was the boyhood friend of Paolo Borsellino, another judge and prosecutor with whom he collaborated in the Maxiprocesso.  They grew up in the same neighborhood, La Kalsa, the old Arab quarter, in Palermo.  Borsellino was also killed in a bomb blast on Totò Riina's orders a few months after Falcone’s murder.  Like Falcone, Borsellino was visiting his mother.  I leave it to you to determine the moral of that story.

Falcone’s death is marked by an anti-Mafia demonstration/event every year in Piazza Magione, where he grew up and played soccer.  This year’s event looked beyond the Sicilian Mafia and included protests against transnational organized crime.  The piazza was full of students, some of them from the Universita’ della Jurisprudenza in Palermo, where Falcone studied, as well as student activists against organized crime from all over Italy and locals from the neighborhood.  A street party with a serious theme.  

The murders of Falcone and Borsellino in 1992 sparked outrage throughout Palermo and gave rise to a feminist movement called the Comitato dei Lenzuole (Committee of the Bed Sheets), organized by the feminist activist Marta Cimini.  From their balconies in Via d'Amelio, where Borsellino was killed outside his mother’s apartment, women hung bed sheets from their windows to protest the killings of the prosecutors who had put the Mafia behind bars.  This uniquely women’s protest tradition continues today.

The death of Falcone, known as the Strage di Capaci (the massacre at Capaci) orchestrated by Totò Riina, has been the subject of at least six films, among them Excellent Cadavers with Giancarlo Giannini and a documentary about Letizia Battaglia, a feminist photojournalist whose lens captured the mounting body counts in the ‘80s when gang warfare in Palermo reached an epic scale.  The film, Shooting the Mafia, premiered at last year’s Berlin International Film Festival and has actual, real-time footage of the explosion, which was absolutely shocking, like something you’d see in a war.  The bombing happened on Highway A29, not far from the airport and close to the junction with Capaci.  It killed Falcone, his wife, and three police escort agents traveling in the vehicle ahead of Falcone.  

Details of the politically-motivated murder are well-known.  The killing was decided at a meeting of the Sicilian Mafia Commission after the Maxiprocesso convictions were upheld on appeal in January 1992.  A Mafia informant described the victory celebration that followed the bombing; Riina ordered French champagne to toast the carnage.   The informant revealed the men and their methods:  who tunneled beneath the highway, who packed the 13 drums with over 400 kilos of TNT and Semtex, who hauled them into place on a skateboard, who radioed the position of Falcone’s motorcade, and who pressed the detonator.  The crater left by the bomb was enormous and seriously disrupted the major traffic corridor between Palermo, the airport, and Trapani.  Message sent. 

After working for a few years in a private law practice, Falcone gravitated to criminal law and served as a prosecutor before joining the bankruptcy court in Palermo.  Dull?  Not at all.  Falcone learned how to unravel financial records, how to “follow the money,“ and his bankruptcy court experience proved seminal in his investigations of transnational Mafia drug trafficking.   

Recognizing the global dimensions of the heroin trade early on, Falcone was the first in Sicily to collaborate with law enforcement colleagues from other countries.  In the 1980s he worked with the U.S. Justice Department and the FBI to investigate the narcotics trade between Sicily (its center) and the United States, which culminated in the "Pizza Connection Trial," the longest criminal jury trial in the federal courts in U.S. history.  The prosecution involved a Sicilian and American Mafia-run enterprise that distributed vast quantities of heroin and cocaine in the United States and then laundered the illegal proceeds before sending the "cleaned" money back to the suppliers in Sicily.  The U.S. Mafia defendants used pizza parlors as fronts for narcotics sales and collections – hence the name "Pizza Connection."

The collaborative investigation resulted in 38 arrests in Italy, Switzerland, and the U.S.  Twenty-two of the defendants tried in the U.S. were convicted.  (The FBI always gets their man, unless he's the president.  Sorry.  Couldn't resist.)  And so did Falcone.  Four defendants were convicted in Italy, and four in Switzerland; four remained fugitives; two were murdered, and one died of natural causes during trial. 

The association between Falcone and the FBI was a close one that surfaces some familiar names.  On the 20th anniversary of Falcone’s murder in 2012, Robert S. Mueller III presided at an FBI ceremony honoring Falcone.  From Mueller’s remarks:

As some of you may know, a bronze bust of Judge Falcone sits in the Falcone Memorial Garden at the FBI Academy in Quantico—an idea introduced by then-FBI Director Sessions after Judge Falcone’s assassination, and carried out by FBI Director Freeh during his tenure.

Thousands of men and women—special agents, state and local police officers, and international partners alike—have walked through that garden on their way to class…or perhaps on their way to dinner with newfound friends to discuss best practices in law enforcement.

They may not know of Judge Falcone. But they are the lasting legacy of his life’s work:  a global network of colleagues—and, indeed, friends—dedicated to stopping those who threaten our safety and our security.

We owe a debt of gratitude to Judge Falcone and to his family for their sacrifice. And we owe Judge Falcone the honor of continuing his work together.

Words to live by from a man who knows a thing or two about investigating international crime.  

If you fly into Palermo, you will land at Falcone-Borsellino Airport.  On your way into Palermo you will pass the monument dedicated to Falcone's sacrifice, located near the bomb site.  Try as it might, the obelisk cannot fill the hole these murders left in the social fabric.  The battle against the Mafia continues, as does the Mafia. 

Falcone left, Borsellino right.

Keep it real!

Marilyn