Brancaccio is a neighbourhood in the municipality of Palermo, Sicily, in Italy. It is a semi-traditional area of the working class. It was important in the history of the Cosa Nostra.
Antimafia priest Pino Puglisi worked in the neighbourhood. He was the pastor of San Gaetano's Parish and spoke out against the Mafia. He was killed on September 15, 1993, on the orders of the local Mafia bosses, the brothers Filippo and Giuseppe Graviano. [1]
Salvatore De Giorgi is an Italian prelate of the Catholic Church who was Archbishop of Palermo from 1996 until his retirement in 2006. He was made a cardinal in 1998. He was first made a bishop in 1973 and led other dioceses in his native Apulia from 1978 to 1990.
Filippo Marchese was a leading figure in the Sicilian Mafia and a hitman suspected of dozens of homicides. Marchese was one of the most feared killers working for mafia boss Vincenzo Chiaracane, closely related to the Giuseppe Greco family which was in control of the Ciaculli neighbourhood of Palermo.
Matteo Messina Denaro, also known as Diabolik, is a Sicilian Mafia boss. He got his nickname from the Italian comic book character of the same name. He is considered to be one of the new leaders of Cosa Nostra after the arrest of Bernardo Provenzano on 11 April 2006, and the arrest of Salvatore Lo Piccolo in November 2007. Matteo Messina Denaro became known nationally on 12 April 2001 when the magazine L'Espresso put him on the cover with the headline: Ecco il nuovo capo della Mafia. He has been a fugitive on the most wanted list since 1993 and according to Forbes magazine he is among the ten most wanted criminals in the world. With the deaths of Bernardo Provenzano in 2016 and Salvatore Riina in 2017, Messina Denaro is seen as the unchallenged boss of all bosses within the Mafia.
Antonino "Nino" Giuffrè is an Italian mafioso from Caccamo in the Province of Palermo, Sicily. He became one of the most important Mafia turncoats after his arrest in April 2002.
Giuseppe Lucchese, known as Occhi di ghiaccio, is a member of the Sicilian Mafia from the Brancaccio neighbourhood in Palermo. He was one of the favourite hitmen of the Corleonesi, headed by Totò Riina, during the Second Mafia War in 1981-83.
Giuseppe Graviano is an Italian mafioso from the Brancaccio quarter in Palermo. He also was one the men of the death squad that murdered Salvatore Contorno's relatives. He is currently serving several life sentences. He and his three brothers became members of the Sicilian Mafia Commission for the Brancaccio-Ciaculli mandamento, substituting Giuseppe Lucchese who was in prison.
Giuseppe Guttadauro is an Italian Mafia boss and a high-profile surgeon from the Rocella neighbourhood in Palermo. Born in Bagheria, he became the regent of the Brancaccio mandamento after the arrest and subsequent incarceration of the Mafia boss Gaspare Spatuzza in 1998.
Operation Old Bridge is the code name for the February 7, 2008 arrests in Italy and the United States that targeted the Gambino crime family. Among the indicted were the reputed acting bosses Jackie D'Amico, Nicholas Corozzo and Joseph Corozzo of the Gambino crime family. The indictments included: murder, drug trafficking, robbery and extortion.
Pietro Tagliavia is a member of the Sicilian Mafia. Despite his young age, he is considered to be one of the upcoming leading Mafiosi of Cosa Nostra in Palermo.
Giovanni Motisi also known as 'U Pacchiuni, is a member of Sicilian Mafia in Sicily from the Altarello neighbourhood in Palermo. He has been on the most wanted list of the Italian ministry of the Interior since 1998.
Gaspare Spatuzza is a Sicilian mafioso from the Brancaccio quarter in Palermo. He was an assassin for the brothers Filippo and Giuseppe Graviano who headed the Mafia family of Brancaccio. After the arrest of the Gravianos in January 1994, he apparently succeeded them as the regent of the Mafia family. He was arrested in 1997 and started to cooperate with the judicial authorities in 2008. In his testimony he claimed that media tycoon and prime minister Silvio Berlusconi made a deal with the Sicilian Mafia in 1993 that put the country "in the hands" of Cosa Nostra.
Giuseppe "Pino" Puglisi was a Roman Catholic priest in the rough Palermo neighbourhood of Brancaccio. He openly challenged the Mafia who controlled the neighbourhood, and was killed by them on his 56th birthday. His life story has been retold in a book, Pino Puglisi, il prete che fece tremare la mafia con un sorriso (2013), and portrayed in a film, Come Into the Light (2005). He is the first person to be killed by the Mafia who was declared Blessed by the Catholic Church.
The via D'Amelio bombing was a terror attack by the Sicilian Mafia which took place in Palermo, Sicily, Italy on 19 July 1992. It killed anti-mafia magistrate Paolo Borsellino and five members of his police escort: Agostino Catalano, Emanuela Loi, Vincenzo Li Muli, Walter Eddie Cosina and Claudio Traina.
The via dei Georgofili bombing was a terrorist attack carried out by the Sicilian Mafia in the very early morning on 27 May 1993 outside the Uffizi in Florence, Italy.
The Graviano family is composed of four mafioso siblings: Benedetto, Filippo, Giuseppe and Nunzia. Their father is Michele Graviano, murdered by Gaetano Grado in 1982.
Within Cosa Nostra a mandamento is traditionally a district of three geographically contiguous Mafia cosche (families controlling a single land feud, or a city ward) in Sicily. A capomandamento represents the head of a territory, the mandamento, and is usually entitled to be part of the provincial Mafia Commission.
Events during the year 1993 in Italy.
Vincenzo Bertolone S.d.P. is an Italian Roman Catholic bishop, being the archbishop of the Archdiocese of Catanzaro-Squillace since 2011. He was previously the bishop of the Diocese of Cassano all'Jonio. He is also a writer who has written and published books on the topics of faith.