Biography
Violante was born in Dire Dawa,in the Italian Ethiopian part of Italian East Africa. His father,a journalist and Communist,was forced to emigrate to Ethiopia by the fascist regime. His family was held by the British in an internment camp,where Violante was born and remained until 1943.
Graduated in jurisprudence at University of Bari in 1963,he joined the magistrature in 1966 and became professor of public law at University of Turin in 1970. Later he held the position of full professor at University of Camerino. He indicted Edgardo Sogno in 1974 for having planned the so-called Golpe bianco ("White coup"),but had to release him in 1978,declaring it impossible to prosecute him. From 1977 to 1979 he worked in the legislative office of the Ministry of Justice,primarily concerned with the struggle against terrorism. He was named investigative magistrate in Turin in 1979. In 1983 he became a professor of legal institutions and penal procedure and resigned from the magistrature.
Violante became a member of the Italian Communist Party (PCI) in 1979 and was immediately elected to the Parliament. From 1980 to 1987 he was the PCI spokesman for legal policy. He then became the vice-president of the PCI parliamentary group. Following the split of the PCI in 1991,he entered the Democratic Party of the Left (PDS). He was a member of the Inquiry into the Aldo Moro case,of the Antimafia Commission,the parliamentary committee for the security services,the commission for the reform of the penal code,the Justice Commission and the Council for the Regulation of the House of Deputies.
Violante was President of the Antimafia Commission from September 1992 until March 1994. Under his leadership,the Commission investigated the relations between the Mafia and politics,the so-called terzo livello (third level) of the Mafia. Important pentiti like Tommaso Buscetta,Antonio Calderone and Gaspare Mutolo gave testimonies about links of the Mafia with Christian Democrat politician Salvo Lima,the so-called "proconsul" of former prime minister Giulio Andreotti in Sicily.
On 16 November 1992 Tommaso Buscetta testified before the Antimafia Commission about the links between Cosa Nostra and Salvo Lima and Giulio Andreotti. He indicated Salvo Lima as the contact of the Mafia in Italian politics. "Salvo Lima was,in fact,the politician to whom Cosa Nostra turned most often to resolve problems for the organisation whose solution lay in Rome," Buscetta testified. [1]
Violante was elected president of the Chamber of Deputies on 10 May 1996 and remained in office until 29 May 2001. Re-elected at the 2001 election,he was named president of the Olive Tree-Democrats of the Left parliamentary group.
Beside books on law and penal procedure,he is the author of two books of interviews about the Mafia:La mafia dell'eroina (1987) and I corleonesi (1993). He has also published:Il piccone e la quercia (1992);Non èla piovra (1995) and a poem,Cantata per i bambini morti di mafia (1995). He has been the editor of Dizionario delle istituzioni e dei diritti del cittadino (1996) and of three reports on the Mafia:Mafie e antimafia - Rapporto 1996;Mafia e societàitaliana - Rapporto 1997 and I soldi della mafia - Rapporto 1998. He also edited two volumes of the Annali della Storia d'Italia ("Annals of the History of Italy"):La criminalità (1997) and Legge Diritto Giustizia. In 1998 he published L'Italia dopo il 1999. La sfida per la stabilità (1998).
Luciano Violante considers himself "a believer" but he does not adhere to the Catholic Church. [2]
Pentito is used colloquially to designate collaborators of justice in Italian criminal procedure terminology who were formerly part of criminal organizations and decided to collaborate with a public prosecutor. The judicial category of pentiti was originally created in 1970s to combat violence and terrorism during the period of left-wing and right-wing terrorism known as the Years of Lead. During the 1986–87 Maxi Trial and after the testimony of Tommaso Buscetta, the term was increasingly applied to former members of organized crime in Italy who had abandoned their organization and started helping investigators.
Tommaso Buscetta was a high ranking Italian mobster and a member of the Sicilian Mafia. He became one of the first of its members to turn informant and explain the inner workings of the organization.
Gaetano Badalamenti was a powerful member of the Sicilian Mafia. Don Tano Badalamenti was the capofamiglia of his hometown Cinisi, Sicily, and headed the Sicilian Mafia Commission in the 1970s. In 1987, he was sentenced in the United States to 45 years in federal prison for being one of the leaders in the so-called "Pizza Connection", a $1.65 billion drug-trafficking ring that used pizzerias as fronts to distribute heroin from 1975 to 1984. He was also sentenced in Italy to life imprisonment in 2002 for the 1978 murder of Peppino Impastato.
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. According to the pentito Tommaso Buscetta, Lima's father, Vincenzo Lima, was a member of the Mafia but is not known whether Lima himself was a "made member" of Cosa Nostra. In the final report of the first Italian Antimafia Commission (1963–1976), Lima was described as one of the pillars of Mafia power in Palermo.
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.
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.
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.
Francesco Marino Mannoia is a former member of the Sicilian Mafia who became a pentito in 1989. His nickname was Mozzarella. He is considered to be one of the most reliable government witnesses against the Mafia. Antimafia magistrate Giovanni Falcone, who was first to interrogate him, recalled Marino Mannoia as an intelligent and reliable witness.
The Sicilian Mafia Commission, known as Commissione or Cupola, is a body of leading Sicilian Mafia members who decide on important questions concerning the actions of, and settling disputes within the Sicilian Mafia or Cosa Nostra. It is composed of representatives of a mandamento who are called capo mandamento or rappresentante. The Commission is not a central government of the Mafia, but a representative mechanism for consultation of independent Mafia families who decide by consensus. Its primary role is to keep the use of violence among families within limits tolerable to the public and political authorities.
Ignazio Salvo and his cousin Nino Salvo were two wealthy businessmen from the town of Salemi in the province of Trapani. They had strong political connections with the Christian Democrat party, in particular with the former mayor of Palermo, Salvo Lima, and Giulio Andreotti. At the Maxi Trial against the Mafia in the mid-1980s, they were convicted of association with Mafia members.
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.
Antonino Calderone was a Sicilian Mafioso who turned state witness (pentito) in 1987 after his arrest in 1986.
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.
The Antimafia Commission is a bicameral commission of the Italian Parliament, composed of members from the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate of the Republic. The first commission, formed in 1963, was established as a body of inquiry tasked with investigating the "phenomenon of the [Sicilian] Mafia". Subsequent commissions expanded their scope to investigate all "organized crime of the Mafia type", which included other major criminal organizations in Italy, such as the Camorra, the 'Ndrangheta, and the Sacra Corona Unita.
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.
Pietro Torretta was a member of the Sicilian Mafia. He was the boss of the Mafia family in the Uditore district in Palermo and one of the protagonists in the First Mafia War. He was initially considered to be the man behind the Ciaculli massacre.
Antonio Bardellino was a powerful Camorrista and boss of the Casalesi clan, having a prominent role in the organized crime in the province of Caserta during the 1980s. He was one of the last of the old-style Camorra godfathers.
Salvatore Riina, called Totò, 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 Ciaculli massacre on 30 June 1963 was caused by a car bomb that exploded in Ciaculli, an outlying suburb of Palermo, killing seven police and military officers sent to defuse it after an anonymous phone call. The bomb was intended for Salvatore "Ciaschiteddu" Greco, head of the Sicilian Mafia Commission and the boss of the Ciaculli Mafia family. Mafia boss Pietro Torretta was considered to be the man behind the bomb attack.
The term State-Mafia Pact describes an alleged series of negotiations between important Italian government officials 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 to stop the attacks; according to other sources and hypotheses, it began even earlier. In summary, the supposed cornerstone of the deal was an end to "the Massacre Season" in return for a reduction in the detention measures provided for Italy's Article 41-bis prison regime. 41-bis was the law by which the Antimafia pool led by Giovanni Falcone had condemned hundreds of mafia members to the "hard prison regime". The negotiation hypothesis has been the subject of long investigations, both by the courts and in the media. In 2021, the Court of Appeal of Palermo acquitted a close associate of former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, while upholding the sentences of the mafia bosses. This ruling was confirmed by the Italian Supreme Court of Cassation in 2023.
