| Servizio per le Informazioni e la Sicurezza Democratica SISDE | |
 | |
 SISDE Logo | |
| Agency overview | |
|---|---|
| Formed | 24 October 1977 |
| Preceding agency | |
| Dissolved | 2007 |
| Superseding agency | |
| Jurisdiction | Government of Italy |
| Minister responsible | |
Servizio per le Informazioni e la Sicurezza Democratica (Intelligence and Democratic Security Service), was the domestic intelligence agency of Italy.
With the reform of the Italian Intelligence Services approved on 1 August 2007, SISDE was replaced by AISI. [1]
Since the end of World War II, Italian intelligence agencies have been reorganized many times in an attempt to increase their effectiveness and bring them more fully under civilian control.
The agency was established as part of a broader reform of the Italian intelligence community, which represented the latest in a long string of government attempts to effectively manage Italy's intelligence agencies.
In 1977, with Legislative Act n.801 of 24/10/1977, this came after a former chief of SID, Vito Miceli, was arrested for "conspiration against the State" (See Golpe Borghese), and the intelligence agencies were reorganized in a democratic attempt. This re-organization mainly consisted of:
In spite of these changes, in the early 1980s, several members of SISDE were involved in the Propaganda 2 masonic lodge scandal.
In 1992, SISDE member Bruno Contrada, who had led some intelligence cells in Palermo, was arrested for involvement with the Sicilian mafia. The service was also involved in the massacre of judge Paolo Borsellino in 1992. Investigations held by police telecommunication expert Gioacchino Genchi attested the presence of an undercover SISDE seat in the Castello Utveggio, a Liberty style castle on the Monte Pellegrino, a mountain overlooking Palermo and Via D'Amelio, the street in which Borsellino was killed. The circumstance was discovered by analyzing the phone calls of a mafia boss, Gaetano Scotto, who called a phone number owned by SISDE in the castle. After the revelation, Genchi was removed from investigations and the Castello Utveggio case archived by the Tribunal of Caltanissetta. Borsellino had also met Contrada in the Ministry of Interiors, in Rome, two days before his death. [2]
Since 1 August 2007, with Legislative Act n.124 of 08/03/2007, following the reform of the Italian intelligence agencies, SISDE, SISMI and CESIS were replaced respectively by AISI, AISE and DIS, [3] and the COPACO was granted additional oversight and control powers. SISDE's last director was prefect Franco Gabrielli.
SISDE's mission was targeted to the defence of the State and its Institutions against whoever tries to threaten them, and from all subversion attempts.
It shared responsibility for this task with SISMI, except in matters involving organized crime.
SISDE reported to the Ministry of the Interior, which attended to its regulations, supervised its activities, and designated its directors.
SISDE's motto, as seen on its logo, was "Per aspera ad veritatem" (Latin for "Through difficulties towards the truth"). It was depicted for the first time only in the second version of its official logo, in 1982, and it was maintained in the third and last version, adopted in 2002.
It was chosen because, «by means of the balance between tradition and innovation, [it] emphasizes with full meaning the will of the Institution to address the challenges of modern society, characterised by new and emerging asperities and instabilities, with the purpose to defend national security with that kind of knowledge offering which founds the mission of every modern intelligence system». [4]
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.
Servizio per le Informazioni e la Sicurezza Militare was the military intelligence agency of Italy from 1977–2007.
The Niger uranium forgeries were forged documents initially released in 2001 by SISMI, which seem to depict an attempt made by Saddam Hussein in Iraq to purchase yellowcake uranium powder from Niger during the Iraq disarmament crisis. On the basis of these documents and other indicators, the governments of the United States and the United Kingdom asserted that Iraq violated United Nations sanctions against Iraq by attempting to procure nuclear material for the purpose of creating weapons of mass destruction.
Comitato Esecutivo per i Servizi di Informazione e Sicurezza was an Italian government committee whose mission was the coordination of all the intelligence sector, and specifically between the two civilian and military intelligence agencies, with the aim to report all the relevant information collected by it to the political Authorities, represented by the Presidency of the Council of Ministers.
Nicolò Pollari is a general of the Italian Guardia di Finanza, who was the former head of Italy's national military intelligence agency, or SISMI, from 1 October 2001 until his resignation on 20 November 2006.
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 SISMI-Telecom scandal, uncovered in Italy in 2006, refers to a surveillance scandal believed to have begun in 1996, under which more than 5,000 persons' phones were tapped.
The Abu Omar Case was the abduction and transfer to Egypt of the Imam of Milan Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr, also known as Abu Omar. The case was picked by the international media as one of the better-documented cases of extraordinary rendition carried out in a joint operation by the United States' Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Italian Military Intelligence and Security Service (SISMI) in the context of the "global war on terrorism" declared by the Bush administration.
Guido Salvini is an Italian judge, based in Milan. He issued European arrest warrants in 2005 against approximatively 20 CIA agents accused of having taken part in the abduction of Abu Omar, the Egyptian cleric in Milan in 2003. The case is known in Italy as the Imam Rapito affair. Before that, Guido Salvini was in charge of investigations, since July 1988, concerning Italy's strategy of tension during the 1970s.
Comitato parlamentare per la sicurezza della Repubblica is a body of the Italian Parliament deputed to survey and oversee the activities of the Italian intelligence agencies.
On 13 May 1981, in St. Peter's Square in Vatican City, Pope John Paul II was shot and wounded by Mehmet Ali Ağca while he was entering the square. The Pope was struck four times and suffered severe blood loss. Ağca was apprehended immediately and later sentenced to life in prison by an Italian court. The Pope later forgave Ağca for the assassination attempt. He was pardoned by Italian president Carlo Azeglio Ciampi at the Pope's request and was deported to Turkey in June 2000.
Italian intelligence agencies are the intelligence agencies of Italy. Currently, the Italian intelligence agencies are the Agenzia Informazioni e Sicurezza Esterna (AISE), focusing on foreign intelligence, and the Agenzia Informazioni e Sicurezza Interna (AISI), focusing on internal security. They form part of the Department of Information for Security, which in turn is part of the Presidency of the Council of Ministers. The agencies have been reorganized multiple times since the birth of the Italian Republic in 1946 to attempt to increase effectiveness.
The counter-terrorism page primarily deals with special police or military organizations that carry out arrest or direct combat with terrorists. This page deals with the other aspects of counter-terrorism:
The Agenzia Informazioni e Sicurezza Interna, commonly known as AISI, is the security agency of Italy. The AISI is the successor of the Servizio per le Informazioni e la Sicurezza Democratica (SISDE) which was disbanded, and replaced by Dipartimento delle Informazioni per la Sicurezza, after the Act of August 3, 2007 No 124 which restructured the Italian intelligence community. Article 6 of this act clearly prohibits the agency from conducting operations outside Italy.
The Agenzia Informazioni e Sicurezza Esterna is the foreign intelligence service of Italy.
The Dipartimento delle Informazioni per la Sicurezza is a department of the Presidency of the Council of Ministers of Italy, instituted in 2007 as part of the reform of the Italian security services. The department is part of Sistema di informazione per la sicurezza della Repubblica. It is currently headed by Elisabetta Belloni, the successor to General Gennaro Vecchione.
Bruno Contrada 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.
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.