Bruno Contrada (born September 2, 1931 in Naples, Italy) is the former police chief of Palermo and deputy director of the civil intelligence service SISDE who was arrested based on revelations of former Sicilian Mafiosi turned pentiti, Gaspare Mutolo and Giuseppe Marchese.
Contrada was born in Naples. He entered the Italian police in 1958, and in 1973 he received the command of the judiciary police in Palermo.
In 1982 he moved to SISDE with the responsibility of the offices in Sicily and Sardinia. In 1986 he was called to Rome in the Operational Division of the SISDE directory. In 1992, together with Italian Police head Arturo Parisi, he had a secret meeting with antimafia judge Paolo Borsellino under the direction of the then Minister of Interiors, Nicola Mancino. [1] Borsellino, who was reportedly shattered by the meeting, [1] was assassinated two days later in Palermo. Contrada later declared to have been a friend of Borsellino, but the latter's family sharply denied this. [2] Other leading antimafia judge, Giovanni Falcone (also killed two months before Borsellino) had also declared that he did not trust Contrada. [3]
On 24 December 1992, Contrada was arrested. He was accused of having informed the Mafia of upcoming police operations, and preventing an early capture of the Corleonesi boss and fugitive Totò Riina. [4] [5]
Contrada had initially come under suspicion when the first pentito, Tommaso Buscetta warned the anti-Mafia prosecutor, Giovanni Falcone that in 1984, Contrada was suspected of protecting certain bosses, tipping them off about possible police raids. [6] Falcone had also suspected Contrada of informing the Mafia of his intention to invite visiting Swiss prosecutors to his summer house in Addaura on the afternoon of June 19, 1989, when an attempt was made on his life. During the investigations into the money laundering networks of the Mafia in Switzerland it became clear that Contrada had warned a suspect about his impending arrest so that he could escape in time. [6] [7]
The first trial against him began on April 12, 1994, lasted for twenty-two hearings and ended on April 5, 1996, the courts sentenced him to ten years imprisonment for collusion with the Mafia. On May 4, 2001, the Court of Appeal acquitted him, but on December 12, 2002, the Court of Cassation annulled that judgement on appeal, ordering a new trial before a different section of the Court of Appeal of Palermo. On February 26, 2006, the appellate court confirmed, after 31 hours of deliberations, the verdict of the first trial and sentenced Contrada to ten years in prison and payment of court costs. [8] On May 10, 2007, the Court of Cassation confirmed the conviction on appeal. [9]
In 2015, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that Contrada was convicted for acts that at that time were not a crime, in violation of the principle of non-retroactivity of criminal law (nulla poena sine lege). In 2017, 25 years after his arrest, the Supreme Court of Cassation definitively annulled the guilty verdict. [10]
Giovanni Falcone was an Italian judge and prosecuting magistrate. From his office in the Palace of Justice in Palermo, Sicily, he spent most of his professional life trying to overthrow the power of the Sicilian Mafia. After a long and distinguished career, culminating in the Maxi Trial in 1986–1987, on 23 May 1992, Falcone was assassinated by the Corleonesi Mafia in the Capaci bombing, on the A29 motorway near the town of Capaci.
Paolo Emanuele Borsellino was an Italian judge and prosecuting magistrate. From his office in the Palace of Justice in Palermo, Sicily, he spent most of his professional life trying to overthrow the power of the Sicilian Mafia. After a long and distinguished career, culminating in the Maxi Trial in 1986–1987, on 19 July 1992, Borsellino was killed by a car bomb in Via D'Amelio, near his mother's house in Palermo.
Giovanni Brusca is an Italian mobster and former member of the Corleonesi clan of the Sicilian Mafia. He had a major role in the 1992 murders of Antimafia Commission prosecutor Giovanni Falcone and businessman Ignazio Salvo, and once stated that he had committed between 100 and 200 murders. Brusca had been sentenced to life imprisonment in absentia for Mafia association and multiple murder. He was captured in 1996, turned pentito, and his sentence reduced to 26 years in prison. In 2021, Brusca was released from prison.
Salvatore Achille Ettore Lima was an Italian politician from Sicily who was associated with, and murdered by, the Sicilian Mafia. He is often just referred to as Salvo Lima.
Stefano Bontade was a powerful member of the Sicilian Mafia. His actual surname was Bontate. He was the boss of the Santa Maria di Gesù Family in Palermo. He was also known as the Principe di Villagrazia − the area of Palermo he controlled − and Il Falco. He had links with several powerful politicians in Sicily, and with prime minister Giulio Andreotti. In 1981 he was killed by the rival faction within Cosa Nostra, the Corleonesi. His death sparked a brutal Mafia War that left several hundred mafiosi dead.
Corrado Carnevale is an Italian judge, and former president of the Italian Supreme Court of Cassation.
The Maxi Trial was a criminal trial against the Sicilian Mafia that took place in Palermo, Sicily. The trial lasted from 10 February 1986 to 30 January 1992, and was held in a bunker-style courthouse specially constructed for this purpose inside the walls of the Ucciardone prison.
Michele Greco was a member of the Sicilian Mafia and a convicted murderer. Greco died in prison while serving multiple life sentences. His nickname was Il Papa due to his ability to mediate between different Mafia families. Greco was the head of the Sicilian Mafia Commission.
Cesare Terranova was an Italian judge and politician from Sicily notable for his anti-Mafia stance. From 1958 until 1971 Terranova was an examining magistrate at the Palermo prosecuting office. He was one of the first to seriously investigate the Mafia and the financial operations of Cosa Nostra. He was killed by the Mafia in 1979. Cesare Terranova can be considered the predecessor of the magistrates Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino who were also killed by the Mafia in 1992.
Salvatore Cancemi was an Italian mobster and member of the Sicilian Mafia from Palermo. He is the first member of the Sicilian Mafia Commission that turned himself in voluntarily to become a pentito, a collaborator with the Italian judicial authorities. Cancemi made controversial allegations about the collusion of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and his right-hand man Marcello Dell'Utri with the Mafia.
The Corleonesi Mafia clan was a faction within the Corleone family of the Sicilian Mafia, formed in the 1970s. Notable leaders included Luciano Leggio, Salvatore Riina, Bernardo Provenzano, and Leoluca Bagarella.
Gaspare Mutolo is a Sicilian mafioso, also known as "Asparino". In 1992 he became a pentito. He was the first mafioso who spoke about the connections between Cosa Nostra and Italian politicians. Mutolo’s declarations contributed to the indictment of Italy’s former Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti and to an understanding of the context of the 1992 Mafia murders of the politician Salvo Lima and the magistrates Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino.
Leonardo "Narduzzo" Messina is a Sicilian former mafioso who became a government informant or "pentito" in 1992. His testimony led to the arrest of over 200 mafiosi during the so-called "Operation Leopard". Messina has implicated several politicians and government officials with ties to Sicilian Mafia, in particular Giulio Andreotti, seven times Prime Minister for Italy.
Francesco Madonia was the Mafia boss of the San Lorenzo-Pallavicino area in Palermo. In 1978 he became a member of the Sicilian Mafia Commission.
Salvatore Riina, called Totò 'u Curtu, was an Italian mobster and chief of the Sicilian Mafia, known for a ruthless murder campaign that reached a peak in the early 1990s with the assassinations of Antimafia Commission prosecutors Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, resulting in widespread public outcry and a major crackdown by the authorities. He was also known by the nicknames la belva and il capo dei capi.
The Antimafia Pool was a group of investigating magistrates at the Prosecuting Office of Palermo (Sicily) who closely worked together sharing information and developing new investigative and prosecutorial strategies against the Sicilian Mafia. An informal pool had been created by Judge Rocco Chinnici in the early 1980s following the example of anti-terrorism judges in Northern Italy in the 1970s.
The via D'Amelio bombing was a terrorist attack by the Sicilian Mafia, which took place in Palermo, Sicily, Italy, on 19 July 1992. It killed Paolo Borsellino, the anti-mafia Italian magistrate, and five members of his police escort: Agostino Catalano, Emanuela Loi, Vincenzo Li Muli, Walter Eddie Cosina, and Claudio Traina.
The Capaci bombing was a terror attack by the Sicilian Mafia that took place on 23 May 1992 on Highway A29, close to the junction of Capaci, Sicily. It killed magistrate Giovanni Falcone, his wife Francesca Morvillo, and three police escort agents, Vito Schifani, Rocco Dicillo and Antonio Montinaro; agents Paolo Capuzza, Angelo Corbo, Gaspare Bravo and Giuseppe Costanza survived.
The term State-Mafia Pact defines the negotiation between important Italian functionaries and Cosa Nostra members, that began after the period of the 1992 and 1993 terror attacks by the Sicilian Mafia with the aim to reach a deal and so to stop the attacks. In summary, the supposed cornerstone of the deal was the end of the so-called "massacres season" in return for detention measures attenuation expected by Italian article 41-bis, thanks to which Antimafia pool led by Giovanni Falcone condemned hundreds of mafia members to the so-called "hard prison regime". The negotiation hypothesis has been the subject of long judicial investigations—not yet concluded—and some journalistic investigations.
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