Marsala – Seventy-six years of prison were requested by the prosecutor of the DDA of Palermo Gianluca De Leo for the six defendants, almost all from Castelvetrano, at the trial, underway before the Marsala Court, resulting from the Ermes 3 anti-mafia operation of 20 June 2020 ( two people arrested and 13 reported), which dealt another blow to alleged associates and abettors of the then fugitive boss Matteo Messina Denaro.
The most severe sentence, 18 years of imprisonment, was requested for Giovanni Onofrio Beltrallo, 57 years old, 17 years for Leonarda Furnari, 40 years old, and 16 years for Melchiorre Vivona, 67 years old. These are the other requests of the prosecutor: 12 years in prison and 8 thousand euros fine for Antonino Stella, 77 years old from Marsala, 10 years and 7,500 euros fine for the 62 year old mafia boss Vincenzo La Cascia from Castelvetrano and 3 years for the 54 year old Domenico Salvatore Zerilli .
The various crimes contested by the DDA are mafia association, extortion, possession of weapons and aiding and abetting the fugitive of Messina Denaro, who was initially one of the defendants in the trial. During the blitz carried out four years ago, the Trapani flying squad searched the house of the former fugitive’s mother in Castelvetrano. The other suspects had chosen the abbreviated procedure and for their trial there was a ruling from the Supreme Court a month ago.
The second section of the Supreme Court, accepting the defense requests, annulled four of the six sentences imposed on 5 April 2023 by the fourth section of the Court of Appeal of Palermo. Two of the four convictions were annulled with referral to a different section of the Court of Appeal of Palermo for the redetermination of the sentence.
The defense has, in fact, argued that the membership of Cosa Nostra of Marco Manzo, 59 years old from Campobello di Mazara, sentenced to 9 years in prison, and of Giuseppe Calcagno, 49 years old born in Marsala but resident in Campobello di Mazara, sentenced to 6 years and 8 months, dates back to the years preceding 2015, when, in June, the law came into force which increased the penalties for the crime of mafia-style criminal association.
The defenders had argued the same thesis, without success, both at first and second instance. Manzo and Calcagno were the only ones arrested in Operation Ermes 3.
