Italian Justice On the Run

...The downtrodden peasants, exploited by the landowners and bullied by their overseers, turned to the Mafia for the justice denied them by the often derisive representatives of a distant and indifferent state...

...The relevant entry that year in the Italian Encyclopedia (Vol...

...But postwar affluence and technology soon wrought a great change in leadership and the way the organization was run...

...CHALLENGED BY THE MAFIA Italian Justice On the Run BY SILVIO F. SENIGALLIA Rome Once upon A time the Mafia was popularly thought of as clans of Sicilian Robin Hoods, robbing the rich, helping the poor and defying the authorities...

...Not long ago, an assistant district attorney working on the anti-Mafia team there was accused of writing anonymous letters falsely incriminating his colleagues...

...That is the way Mario Puzo depicts the crime organization in his fictionalized pre-World War I Sicily...

...XXI, page 863), published under the auspices of the then Fascist government, describes not a centralized crime association but merely a number of separate clans (cosche...

...Silvio F. Senigallia reports regularly for The New Leader on Italian affairs...

...The second rule is omertá, the conspiracy of silence, about what are seen as private affairs to be dealt with directly by the persons concerned...

...According to police experts, the print of his index finger, surreptitiously taken from his coffee cup, matched a print found on one of the letters...

...Most of the victims were policemen, judges andmembers of rival gangs...

...Readers of Puzo's book will remember that revenge was swift and the mob's quid pro quo was eventually extracted from the poor father...

...It will be recalled that Lucky Luciano was released from Sing Sing and shipped to Sicily to convince his former associates to use their good offices in support of the Americans...

...A few days later, the higher magistrate who had spoken of "unequivocal proof and given the assistant DA's name to the press, admitted that the case would not stand up in court...

...The media estimate that Mafia murders in Sicily in the first halfofl989 have exceeded 500...

...The Minister of Police, Cabinet members and at times even the President of the Republic attend the victims' funerals and kiss widows and orphans...

...Nevertheless, the man's career has been ruined and the entire District Attorney's office in Palermo is under investigation...

...Now the "honored society," as it used to be called, no longer had to limit itself to running the estates of absentee landowners or intervening in the settling of private vendettas...

...The most articulate advocate of a drastic approach is the wellknown columnist Giorgio Bocca...

...Today the Mafia controls banks and financial institutions, and "manages" information channels...

...The mafiosi are self-appointed officers of a primitive law and their protegés become their tools and accomplices...

...On this evidence, the man—until then held in high esteem—was branded as "the raven" and indicted...

...There is strong pressure from large segments of the public for reviving the national emergency measures taken in 197 8 against political terrorism after the kidnapping and murder of DC leader Aldo Moro...

...Clearly, at that time the regime did not want the Italian people to have a more accurate picture of organized crime operations in their major island, nor did it wish to supply foreign (and especially American) public opinion with additional evidence for an already negative impression of Southern Italy...

...As Bocca sees it, "normal law" and "normal justice" administered by an inefficient, overworked judiciary have become useless...

...They were men with considerable capillary influence, coupled with a determination unburdened by the peculiar social values that sometimes constrained their predecessors...

...Even 30 years after arriving at Ellis Island, Don Vito Corleone—now the Godfather— can scold his old friend the mortician for going first to the negligent police and only later to the padrino when his daughter is disfigured by two thugs...

...What is less well known is that a similarly distorted view of the Mafia was the official one here as late as 1935...

...The huge sums of money pouring in were invested by the new leadership in legitimate and pseudolegitimate businesses throughout the country, "dirty" money was laundered, and an increasing number of reputedly honest people became partners or paid tools...

...In the August 11 La Repubblica, a Rome daily, he wrote that the state is practically on the ropes and that its surrender to the Mafia can be avoided only if a "real war" is waged against it...

...The ultimate tragic development, however, has been the Mafia's virtual monopoly on importing and distributing drugs, which has led to a spiral of bloodshed...

...The iron-clad first rule is that "a man must make himself respected," and it applies both to family matters and to a broad range of criminal offenses, including homicide, kidnapping, cattle theft, and damage to trees or vineyards...

...The problem is what to do and how...

...Interviewed on TV, they promise severe measures, but nothing really changes...

...Awe-inspired obedience was the price for such benevolence...

...To be sure, the present government, like those before it, is fully aware of the danger represented by the octopus of organized crime...

...Bocca may well be overly dramatic in his analysis...

...That the researcher's bland analysis soft-pedaled the seriousness of the issue even 55 years ago is proved by the massive anti-Mafia paramilitary operation the Fascist government launched shortly before the encyclopedia went to print...

...The Mafia survived, though, and went on to prosper during the occupation of Sicily (1943-45) when some of its leaders were rewarded by the U. S. High Command for having assisted in the invasion...

...At the end of the War the old Mafia resumed its old tactics...

...By contrast, the fight against organized crime is being thwarted by controversies and palace intrigues...

...Indeed, Palermo's Palace of Justice has been nicknamed the Palace of Poisons f or the miasmic atmosphere of its criminal section...

...These factions, consisting of petty criminals hired by all-powerful local bosses and instructed to "protect" the poor peasants in return for their total subservience, grew out of a primitive social code based on a warped conception of honor...

...The laughter of the Mafia leaders can be heard in Rome...

...But continued newspaper reports of the internecine squabbling between district attorneys and judges over the conduct of Mafia cases may eventually lead Italians to throw up their hands and demand justice at any price...

...It is widely held among the islanders, continues the Italian Encyclopedia, that only the weak and the cowardly would request police intervention upon being wronged...

...The new capi have learned to dress modishly and behave like respectable business people, but the old ruthlessness remains...

...The Mafia's terrible impact on society is a national emergency requiring stern methods, and in a democracy this does not mean violations of civil rights...

...It has been particularly successful in infiltrating the fields of public works, tourism and sanitation...

...It has representatives in the top echelons of the political parties and occupies positions of authority at the local, regional and central government levels...

...People should not be afraid of special laws and procedures, he concludes, simply because they bring back unhappy memories of Fascism...

...The new Prime Minister, Giulio Andreotti (informally referred to as Giulio VI because this is the sixth time he has assumed the office), recently declared that the fight against the Mafia has top priority and is under his direct supervision...

...Terrorism was much less dangerous than the Mafia is, he argued, yet was fought by the state through special procedures with courage and firm resolve...

...That led to a mutually convenient arrangement: The Mafia sold the politicians votes in exchange for plum administrativepostsliketax-collecting, public works and irrigation (often non-irrigation) programs for the island's parched fields...

...The new young capi saw that the key to success was the exploitation of Italy's return to a multiparty electoral system...

...Their ability to manipulate a still ignorant and basically conservative electorate was noticed by Sicilian politicians, especially by the local bosses of the Christian Democrat Party (DC...

...More drugs are sold, more people are killed and the number of deaths by overdose is ever higher...