Antonio di Pietro is running a campaign against the new decree law which will make it impossible for investigators to use wiretapped conversations in the prosecution of criminals (most crimes with less than a ten year prison sentence will be excluded if the law goes through in its present form)
Archive for the ‘anti-Mafia’ Category
Please tap my phone!
Wednesday, February 18th, 2009Mouldy Schifani
Monday, May 12th, 2008Italian journalist Marco Travaglio is in the firing line after this weekend’s program “Che tempo che fa” hosted by Fabio Fazio. Travaglio illustrated how the political climate of the moment dictates what so-called journalists should or shouldn’t be writing.
“It’s obvious”, he says “that if the political climate is conducive to a non-conflictual relationship between the opposition and the new government majority - Schifano has had friendships with members of the mafia - I don’t write that Schifani has had friendships with members of the mafia because neither the right-wing nor the left-wing want me to – and what have I got to do with right and left? They can take any political stance they want to but I have to do my job as a journalist - I have to write about it. Lirio Abbate has written about this in his book with Gomez and he is rightly lauded as a heroic journalist who is threatened by the Mafia. So they should either have the courage to say that Lirio Abbate is a villain and a liar or they must have the courage to take note of what he says about the second most important institutional role and ask this person to explain his relationship with those gentlemen who have been sentenced for Mafia crimes”
Although Travaglio didn’t actually say during the programme was that Schifani, president of the Italian Senate, has friends among the Mafia, but merely quoted from Abbate and Gomez’s book ”I complici” (The accomplices), now both right and left are thirsting for his blood.
Perhaps what annoyed politician’s most was Travaglio’s comment about the kind of leader of the Senate which can be expected after Schifani – perhaps an earthworm or a form of mould, a comparison which Travaglio managed to rectify in time. Likening Schifani to an earthworm or mould would be an insult to lower organisms. Mould can at least be used to produce penicillin.
Don Ciotti warns against latest Government threat to anti-mafia activism
Sunday, October 23rd, 2005Another not-too-subtle move by the govt. gang to get confiscated mafia property back into mafia hands.
Don Ciotti, president of the Association Libera which actively promotes civic education and anti-mafia activisim in Sicily, together with dozens of relatives of Mafia victims, has warned us about a new Bill in parliament which puts the Rognoni-La Torre law in danger and is likely to undermine all the work done by his association to provide employment for young people both in buildings and on land confiscated from the Mafia.
The new Bill, if passed, would make it possible to reverse court decisions on the confiscation of Mafia property – with no time limit at all – in favour of anyone who can prove a “legally recognised interest”.
The Bill seems to be yet another made-to-measure law to protect the personal interests of friends of friends of present government members. If this Bill goes through it will mean that confiscated properties (from farms to cooperatives for young people which have been transformed into centres for social services) will end up in a limbo of total indecision.
One of the associations presently using confiscated property is the Giovanni and Francesca Falcone Fondation, whose work to honour the memory of Giovanni Falcone, his wife Francesca Morvillo and the three bodyguards, who died in the Capaci dynamite attack in 1992, involves 80 schools and over 800 schoolchildren all over Italy. How will they be affected if the proposed law goes though?
Accusations by new head of anti-mafia Grasso
Friday, October 21st, 2005
Pietro Grasso
On “Tv7″ interview with the head of the national antimafia
“Fugitive boss is protected by all social strata ”
Provenzano, Grasso accuses politicians
ROME- Mafia fugitive Bernardo Provenzano “is protected by representatives of the institutions, politicians, business men, members of the police force”. The newly-elected head of the national anti-mafia, Piero Grasso, in his first official interview as head of via Giulia, which will be broadcast this evening on ‘Tv7′ (Raiuno, 23.25), does not mince his words when he explains what is behind the decade-long concealment of the mafia boss. His words have not escaped the attention of the president of Copaco (Parliamentary Committee of Control of Secret Services), Enzo Bianco who announces that he will meet Grasso “as soon as possible”. “I know Grasso, he is a very serious person and I admire him as a man and as a judge”, says Bianco. “I know he does not enjoy the limelight and when he speaks, he has a very good reason for doing so. If he said those things he must know what he is talking about. ”
In the interview Grasso says that it is not only a “criminal organisation” that is keeping Provenzano in safe hiding but entire social classes. “We have discovered that a certain businessman was receiving information about our investigations from a low-ranking police officer – Grasso continues. This businessman had connections with Cosa Nostra and so our investigations became known directly to Provenzano”.
Grasso accuses politicians and institutions, mentioning the name of the former president of City Council of Villa Abate, Francesco Campanella, who obtained official stamps for Provenzano’s false documents. “This gives one some idea”, Grasso points out, “of how Cosa Nostra manages to worm its way into our institutions. Campanella is the go-between for Cosa Nostra and other social categories, because he has so many different connections- with politics, finance, ministers in Rome; this is what gives the organisation the strength and the ability to infiltrate and have these links with society as a whole. “Provenzano’s lawyer, Salvatore Traina, replies curtly: “If Piero Grasso’s accusations were true, it would be very serious indeed.”
“Tv7″ will show an extraordinary film documentary: for the first time on TV it will be possible to see how the little notes with written orders, known as “pizzini”, are delivered.
(21 October 2005) (translated from the Repubblica)
http://www.repubblica.it/2005/j/sezioni/cronaca/grassodenu/grassodenu/grassodenu.html