State-Mafia ‘bargaining’ drove judge Borsellino’s death

ROME – On the twenty-sixth anniversary of the via D’Amelio bombing, an attack by the Sicilian Mafia in Palermo in which magistrate Paolo Borsellino and five members of his police escort were killed, judges on Friday are investigating the theory he was assassinated due to knowledge of negotiations between the Mafia and the State.

 “To honour the memory of the judge Borsellino and the people who followed him we must not stop seeking the truth behind the massacre,” Italian president Sergio Mattarella said in a statement marking 26 years since the attack in the Sicilian city.

 Dialogue between Carabinieri and mafia boss Totò Riina after the bombing at Capaci on May 23, 1992, in which magistrate Giovanni Falcone was killed, reportedly drove the mafia gang ‘Cosa nostra’ to murder Paolo Borsellino quicker, according to court judges at the conference in Palermo. They have placed the sentence under the headline ‘State-Mafia bargaining’.

 “Twenty-six years later,” began the president, “the memory and distress surrounding the awful attack in Via d’Amelio, in which judge Paolo Borsellino and his colleagues Agostino Catalano, Walter Eddie Cosina, Vincenzo Li Muli, Emanuela Loi and Claudio Traina lost their lives, is very much still present. Borsellino was an exemplary judge; distinguished, reserved, courageous and determined. His work has been fundamental in the fight against the Sicilian Mafia, and together with his friend Giovanni Falcone, he has become a symbol of Italy that fights and won’t give in to organised criminality.”

 “The six victims will be remembered in the daily fight against the Mafia. The search for the truth on Via d’Amelio is a necessity for an Italy that believes in the example they have set and in honesty,” the Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte wrote on twitter.

 “Amongst the questions surrounding the search for the truth from Via d’Amelio that the victim’s daughter, Fiammetta Borsellino, has presented to the government, there are those that refer to the Italian Intelligence Services’ actions. I am in charge of examining the case to provide answers,” said the minister of justice Alfonso Bonafede on Friday.

 Borsellino’s niece also wrote her thoughts. “Dear Grandpa, I am sorry for what happened on July 19 1992. Certainly if you were alive you would know how much I would care for you. I love you lots. Your niece.”

 The message was read by Don Cosimo Scordato at the end of the Mass in memory of Borsellino, contained in a small card written by the young niece of the magistrate killed 26 years ago and the daughter of Manfredi Borsellino, the second son of the magistrate killed by Cosa Nostra. The message was accompanied by a drawing that depicted a large heart. Manfredi Borsellino also arrived in the church of San Francesco Saverio in Palermo, where a mass was celebrated in memory of his father.

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