Caltanissetta, 4 June. (Adnkronos) – (from correspondent Elvira Terranova) – Six trials in 32 years, which become 14 if you also count the appeals and decisions of the Court of Cassation. Over 35 judges expressed their opinions on what happened at 4.58pm on 19 July 1992 in via D’Amelio in Palermo. But despite this, there are still many black holes surrounding the massacre in which judge Paolo Borsellino and the five escort agents died. Lots of missing pieces. The last sentence is this evening. There were 19 hearings in the appeal process on the misdirection, which began on 31 October 2023 before the Court of Appeal of Caltanissetta, presided over by Giovanbattista Tona. Two collaborators of justice were heard, Francesco Onorato and Vito Galatolo. And a former policeman and now criminal lawyer, Gioacchino Genchi. During the appeal process, various new developments emerged, with elements deemed “important” by the Prosecutor General’s Office, starting from the banking documentation of Arnaldo La Barbera, former director of the Palermo Flying Squad and head of the investigative group called ‘Falcone e Purse’. Money, a lot, perhaps too much, in cash, arrived in his bank account. From where? And by whom? This is what the investigators tried to find out. Not only.
During the trial, a folder from the ‘Falcone e Borsellino’ group was also found by the magistrates, with a note from the Palermo Flying Squad noting the inspection carried out with the false repentant Vincenzo Scarantino. A document that has never appeared before, after 32 years.
The first trial on the Borsellino massacre began with the declarations of Vincenzo Scarantino himself, with the sentence issued on 26 January 1996. The appeal in 1999. Then, after a few years, the second trial, on 18 March 2002. With the appeal which modifies the sentence. But in the meantime, a new repentant, Gaspare Spatuzza, bursts onto the scene. Which reveals new background on the massacre, denying the entire house of cards built in previous years by the false collaborator Vincenzo Scarantino. Only in 2017, after the Borsellino quater trial, and the review process, was there certainty of the unreliability of Scarantino, but also of other false repentants such as Francesco Andriotta.
Until arriving at the trial on the misdirection of the massacre. The three policemen, Mario Bo, Fabrizio Mattei and Michele Ribaudo, are in the dock. According to the prosecution, they fabricated Scarantino’s accusations. The Caltanissetta court, in first instance, declared the charges against Mario Bo and Fabrizio Mattei to be time-barred. However, the third accused, Michele Ribaudo, was acquitted. The General Prosecutor’s Office, led by Fabio D’Anna, and represented in the courtroom by deputies Gaetano Bono and Maurizio Bonaccorso, is convinced that the misdirection regarding the Via D’Amelio massacre “has occurred” and that the responsibility “lies with the policemen who they didn’t do it out of a banal desire to advance their career but to facilitate Cosa Nostra, a betrayal that cannot be forgiven.” This is why the three policemen in the dock “must be convicted”. To heavy penalties. The general prosecutor of Caltanissetta, Fabio D’Anna, at the end of an indictment last April, had asked for a sentence of 11 years and 10 months in prison for Mario Bo and 9 years and 6 months each for Fabrizio Mattei and Michele Ribaudo . The same penalties requested in the first degree trial. They are accused of aggravated slander for having fabricated false repentants, inducing them to lie, to sidetrack the investigations into the Via D’Amelio massacre. The Caltanissetta court, in first instance, on 12 July 2022, declared the charges against Mario Bo and Fabrizio Mattei to be barred, while the third accused, Michele Ribaudo, was acquitted. But the General Prosecutor’s Office doesn’t agree and is now asking for everyone to be convicted. With the aggravating mafia charge.
“The investigations, immediately after the massacre, suffered evidential pollution”, the Attorney General D’Anna reiterated in his indictment. Which also brought the state apparatus into play. That is, the magistrates who handled the investigations 30 years ago. “Reading the sentence we realize and cannot refrain from saying that the behavior of some colleagues also contributed to this evidential pollution. Inattentive colleagues who were not able to grasp elements of indicators of falsity of the former justice collaborator Vincenzo Scarantino “, He said.
For the Caltanissetta Prosecutor’s Office “there was a betrayal on the part of the state apparatus which betrayed not only Borsellino but also the escort agents. A betrayal that cannot be forgiven. One can betray for many reasons: for money, yes there were some against La Barbera but not against today’s defendants, for their career, but La Barbera didn’t need it, he was still young and would soon become police commissioner, what reason did he have to get involved with a fool like Scarantino” . “Another reason – he continued – could have been the fact that it was necessary to find a culprit to present to public opinion: but why Scarantino? That is, the only one who was part of a family that had nothing to do with it. But why him? The answer I gave it to myself: the only interest that explains the stubbornness of the Falcone-Borsellino group is that they knew perfectly well that with their behavior they were moving away from the truth of the investigations, either to protect state apparatus or to protect mafia apparatus”.
They, the accused, “are not, however, the only demons”. “The line of demons should be long in the dock, but either they are dead or they got away with it”, said prosecutor Maurizio Bonaccorso, attached to the General Prosecutor’s Office. “There are leaders and individuals who got away with it and we know who they are”, he adds. And then he underlined: “There are a series of elements that give certainty of the involvement of institutional figures in the elimination of Doctor Borsellino”.
According to Deputy Attorney General Gaetano Bono, the first instance sentence was “contradictory, illogical, unfair and misleading”. Because the policemen in the dock, now all retired, deliberately sidetracked the investigation into the attack on Paolo Borsellino. “The director of the misdirection was Arnaldo La Barbera, who died a few years ago as a celebrated anti-mafia investigator”, said the prosecutor Gaetano Bono, who at the time of the massacre was still a nine-year-old child. He says: “There is an illogicality of the sentence of first instance which after a few pages paints an inconsistent picture of the reliability of Vincenzo Scarantino”, the false collaborator of justice who had seven innocent people convicted, said Bono who quoted some sentences from the first instance sentence.
The defense of the three policemen has a different opinion. For the lawyers, the prosecutors who dealt with the investigations into the massacre in Via D’Amelio and who did not understand the falsehoods of the former justice collaborator Vincenzo Scarantino “did not act lightly”, “but with grave guilt” in the “evaluation of the elements of trial”. Not only. The same Scarantino who, after 2014, began to “backtrack” on the accusations against the magistrates with “significant reluctance”, “was not encouraged by the three policemen” who today are accused of complicity in aggravated slander in the trial on the misdirection of the Borsellino massacre . This was the counterattack of the policemen’s defense
“There was a lack of respect for jurisdiction on the part of the prosecutors. They, on many occasions, failed to examine the evidence as they should have. And this is not the light-heartedness that the Attorney General mentioned, this is a serious fault”, accused the defense. For the lawyer Giuseppe Seminara there were “irritual, light, superficial, speculative behaviors on the part of many subjects involved in the activity, which begins with the activity of the judicial police, always under control of the judiciary and ends in the evaluation of the evidence of the Borsellino-bis appeal process”.
For the lawyer Giuseppe Panepinto, Mario Bo’s lawyer, “this is not the greatest misdirection of the Italian State but the greatest persistence that the Italian State has made. It is one of the enormous judicial errors. We are faced with an Italian State that we want to clear our conscience, we want to clean the knife on the shoulders of the three policemen. The big loser is the Italian State.” Today the new, yet another, judgment.
