Lia Pasqualino
The “maxi-trial” of Palermo, represented here by the Italian director Marco Bellocchio for “The Traitor” with Pierfrancesco Favino in the role of Tommaso Buscetta.
JUSTICE – ” I hope we can take inspiration from what the Italians are doing very effectively. “. By unveiling his plan to fight organized crime this Sunday, April 28, the Minister of Justice Éric Dupond-Moretti did not hide his desire to draw inspiration from the transalpine model of fighting the mafia to apply it to the scourge of drug traffickers in France.
For this, the Minister of Justice mentioned the future establishment of a repentant statute. A measure which will offer a second chance to criminals, in the event of effective collaboration with the justice system. This status will allow the penalty incurred to be reduced when “ sincere, complete and decisive statements to dismantle criminal networks” were formulated by the repentant.
HAS this adds a form of protectorate which will materialize by “an official and definitive change of civil status”. A method which is directly inspired by Tommaso Buscetta, named after this Sicilian mafioso who became famous for having been one of the first big names in the Italian mafia to have reached the status of repentant, thus breaking the omerta.
THE ” pentito »
“ If it had not been for the repentant Tommaso Buscetta, there would not have been the gigantic Palermo trial (…) In this type of case, the accomplices who testify are essential to bring down the entire network criminal », thus illustrated the minister this Sunday in the columns of the Tribune Sunday. Indeed, the “ Palermo maxi-trial » is a textbook case in terms of justice.
Opened in February 1987 in Sicily, this trial was able to see the light of day when Italy had (finally) given the necessary impetus to tackle the scourge of the mafia, a problem long minimized by the authorities and the State. Result ? An XXL trial that we owe in part to “ pentito » (repentant in Italian) Tommaso Buscetta.
Arrested in the early 1980s in Brazil, this Italian criminal ended up joining a unique witness protection program, offering him costly protection and significant sentence reductions. Enough to break the silence of the mafia world, under the leadership of judge Giovanni Falcone.
Lia Pasqualino
The exchanges between the Italian judge Giovanni Falcone and the repentant criminal Tommaso Buscetta in the Italian film “The Traitor”, released in 2019 at the cinema.
The latter, feeling Buscetta ready to repent after seeing several members of his family murdered, decides to begin a series of secret conversations with the prisoner so that he can provide as many details as possible on the functioning of the mafia. era. Two months later, Tommaso Buscetta spoke down to the smallest details about the hierarchical structure of the mafia at the time.
Treat the problem at the root
In a bunker court, the Palermo trial finally opened in 1986. A little less than 500 defendants then appeared in the boxes, appearing for 120 homicides. Among the accused was Toto Riina, nicknamed “the godfather of godfathers », whom Tommaso Buscetta ultimately designated as responsible for numerous murders.
The result of this trial is cataclysmic for the Our Nostra, the name of the Sicilian mafia. On December 16, 1987, after a year and ten months of hearings, 360 defendants (out of 474) were sentenced for a total of 2,665 years in prison. A key witness in this trial, Tommaso Buscetta will become the perfect example of the effectiveness of the witness protection program. Exiled in the United States, Buscetta will benefit – as the French minister now recommends – from a new identity.
AFP
Pisa on February 10, 1986, this archive photo reveals the crowd present in the bunker courtroom of a Sicilian prison, where the Palermo maxi-trial was held.
But the implementation of this method also allowed Italy to see the birth of a National Anti-Mafia Directorate (DNA) in 1982. An entity ultimately quite close to that which Éric Dupond-Moretti now recommends under the name of ” national prosecutor’s office dedicated to the fight against organized crime “, THE ” PNACO “. DNA had above all made it possible to approach the mafia no longer as ” a series of particular crimes “, but like an “ssystem of economic-military and cultural domination » with a complex structure, as highlighted La Tribune Sunday.
Effective but not radical against the mafia, the system of protection of repentants and the legal measures applied to bring down the bigwigs of the mafia will not have been enough to protect the lives of the instigators of this method of dismantling criminal networks. Whether it was Judge Falcone or Judge Paolo Borsellino, they were both murdered by the mafia in 1992, after numerous appeals from the Palermo maxi-trial were rejected. For his part, Tommaso Buscetta performed cosmetic surgery to be sure to end his life peacefully. This was the case until his death of natural causes in 2000, at the age of 71.
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