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.
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.
Propaganda Due was a Masonic lodge,founded in 1877,within the tradition of Continental Freemasonry and under the authority of Grand Orient of Italy. Its Masonic charter was withdrawn in 1976,and it was transformed by Worshipful Master Licio Gelli into an international,illegal,clandestine,anti-communist,anti-Soviet,anti-Marxist,and radical right criminal organization and secret society operating in contravention of Article 18 of the Constitution of Italy that banned all such secret associations. Licio Gelli continued to operate the unaffiliated lodge from 1976 to 1984. P2 was implicated in numerous Italian crimes and mysteries,including the collapse of the Holy See-affiliated Banco Ambrosiano,the contract killings of journalist Carmine Pecorelli and mobbed up bank president Roberto Calvi,and political corruption cases within the nationwide Tangentopoli bribery scandal. P2 came to light through the investigations into the collapse of Michele Sindona's financial empire.
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.
Arnaldo Forlani was an Italian politician who served as the prime minister of Italy from 1980 to 1981. He also held the office of deputy prime minister,minister of foreign affairs,and minister of defence.
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 GesùFamily 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.
Antonio Gava was an Italian politician and member of Christian Democracy (DC). Son of the 13-time minister Silvio Gava,Antonio was one of the Christian Democratic Party's leading power-brokers in Campania over a 25-year period,beginning in 1968 and ending in 1993,when he was charged with membership of a criminal organisation. Together with Arnaldo Forlani and Vincenzo Scotti,he was the leader of DC's current known as "Alleanza Popolare".
The Stidda is a Sicilian and Maltese Mafia-type criminal organization and criminal society centered in the central-southern part of Sicily and Malta.
Piersanti Mattarella was an Italian politician who was assassinated by the Mafia while he held the position of President of the Regional Government of Sicily. A member of Christian Democracy,he was the brother of Sergio Mattarella,who has been President of Italy since 2015.
Giuseppe Di Cristina was a powerful mafioso from Riesi in the province of Caltanissetta,Sicily,southern Italy. Di Cristina,nicknamed “la tigre’’,was born into a traditional Mafia family,his father Francesco Di Cristina and his grandfather were men of honour as well.
Antonino Calderone was a Sicilian Mafioso who turned state witness (pentito) in 1987 after his arrest in 1986.
Raffaele Cutolo was an Italian crime boss and leader of the Nuova Camorra Organizzata (NCO),an organisation he built to renew the Camorra. Cutolo had a variety of nicknames including 'o Vangelo,'o Princepe,'o Professore and 'o Monaco. Apart from 18 months on the run,Cutolo lived entirely in maximum-security prisons or psychiatric prisons after 1963. At the time of his death he was serving multiple life sentences for murder.
Carmine Alfieri is an Italian Camorra boss,who rose from Piazzolla di Nola to become one of the most powerful members of Neapolitan Camorra in the 1980s. As boss of the Alfieri clan,he was one of the most influential and powerful Camorra bosses from 1984 until his arrest in 1992. Alfieri's nickname is 'o 'ntufato,the angry one,thanks to the dissatisfied,angry sneer he wears constantly.
Pasquale Galasso is a former boss of the Galasso clan,a clan of the Camorra,the Neapolitan crime organization. Since August 1992,he has been a pentito,collaborating with the Italian justice. He revealed many intricate secrets about the Camorra. This led to revelations from other pentiti allowing an insight into the Camorra from the insider's point of view.
On April 27,1981,the Red Brigades (BR) kidnapped the 60-year-old Christian Democrat (DC) politician Ciro Cirillo and killed his two-man escort in the garage of his Naples apartment building. At the time,Cirillo directed reconstruction efforts in Campania devastated by the earthquake in the Irpinia region on November 23,1980. He was released after a controversial deal with the Camorra;they did not negotiate with the BR and only asked them to release him. This happened several years after the Italian state had refused to negotiate with the BR in their kidnapping and murder of Aldo Moro,leading observers and critics to wonder what changed and the reasons behind the state's negotiation. Cirillo died in 2017.
Vincenzo Casillo was an Italian Camorrista and the second in command of the Nuova Camorra Organizzata,a Camorra organization in Naples. His nickname was 'o Nirone.
The Nuova Camorra Organizzata was an Italian Camorra criminal organization founded in the late 1970s by a Neapolitan Camorrista,Raffaele Cutolo,in the region of Campania. It was also known by the initials NCO. The organization was established with the purpose of renewing the old rural Camorra,which dealt in contraband cigarettes and extortion schemes in the Neapolitan fruit market. To this end,Cutolo created a structured and hierarchical organization,in stark contrast to the traditional Camorra clans which are usually fragmented. The members of the NCO were often referred to by rival Camorristi and Italian law enforcement as "Cutoliani".
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.
Lorenzo Nuvoletta was the head of the Nuvoletta clan,a Neapolitan Camorra organization that operated from the town of Marano di Napoli,situated on the northern outskirts of the city of Naples. Nuvoletta was considered one of the most powerful bosses in the entire Camorra from the 1970s to the early 1990s.
