CALTANISSETTA – The Court of Appeal of Caltanissetta declared prescribed the accusation of slander aggravated by having favored the contested mafia to the police officer Maio Boto inspector Fabrizio Mattei and to agent Michele Ribaudo.
These on trial for the misdirection of the investigation into the massacre cost the judge his life Paolo Borsellino and the five escort officers.
The sentence
The verdict confirms the first instance sentence except for Ribaudo who the Court had acquitted on the merits. As already happened in the first instance, it is the aggravating mafia fellwhich led to the statute of limitations for the crime of slander.
Misdirection on the Via D’Amelio massacre: the accusation
The accusation is represented in the courtroom by the prosecutor Fabio D’Anna, by the substitute Gaetano Bono and by the prosecutor Maurizio Bonaccorso, under the direction of the former head of the Mobile Arnaldo La Barbera, who has since passed away.
According to the accusation, the three policemen had created a conspiracy false truth about the massacre forcing people like Vincenzo Scarantino, a petty criminal from the Guadagna neighborhood, to give an untruthful reconstruction of the preparatory phase of the attack and to accuse mafiosi who had nothing to do with the car bomb in Via d’Amelio.
The investigation into the attack
The statements of false repentants have cost life imprisonment to seven innocents, then exonerated in the review process. Judge Borsellino’s sons and brother, some family members of the escort agents and the seven mafia members unjustly convicted for the massacre were civil parties at the trial: Gaetano Murana, Giuseppe la Mattina, Franco Urso, Natale Gambino, Cosimo Vernengo, Salvatore Profeta and Gaetano Scotto.
TO expose the misdirection it was there Caltanissetta Prosecutor’s Office that, on the basis of the declarations of the collaborator of justice Gaspare Spatuzza, reopened the investigation on the attack by reconstructing the real responsibilities in the massacre of the Brancaccio mafia family.
