BARI – Gelao’s murder was “a strategic murder for the existence and expansion of the criminal group” headed by Antonio Busco, “both because it was revenge for the Barbieri murder, and because it struck the leaders of the Palermiti clan, with a ‘action of force aimed at demonstrating the ambitions of the Busco group.”
To confirm this reading of the events that occurred in the Japigia neighborhood in spring 2017, when in three consecutive ambushes between January and April, people were killed in a back-and-forth between clans for the management of drug trafficking, there are «the infinity of revenge and retaliation” against Busco and his associate Giuseppe Signorile “carried out peacefully” according to the Bari DDA by the Palermiti-Parisi clan “with the clear aim of permanently removing them from the Japigia neighborhood, with a view to a sort of “purge” of enemies”.
These are some of the theses that the Anti-Mafia prosecutors Fabio Buquicchio, Ettore Cardinali and Federico Perrone Capano, with the Attorney General’s Office, supported in the appeal to the Supreme Court against the sentence of the Court of Assizes of Appeal of Bari which last November dismantled some pieces of the puzzle put together by the DDA on the bloody spring of 2017. The trial is the one on the two mafia ambushes of March 6 and April 12, 2017, in the context of the feud (begun on January 17 with the murder of the pusher Francesco Barbieri) between the Palermiti clan and the criminal group led by the “traitor” Antonio Busco for the control of drug trafficking: in the first, the criminal Giuseppe Gelao was killed and Antonino Palermiti, nephew of the boss Eugenio, was injured, in response to the Barbieri murder; in the second, the convicted criminal Nicola De Santis, author of the March ambush, died (of which the collaborator of justice Domenico Milella, former right-hand man of the boss Eugenio Palermiti, accused himself). The judges acquitted the two alleged material perpetrators of the Gelao murder, Giuseppe Signorile and Davide Monti, and also the associates of the Palermiti clan who were responsible for the so-called Camorra-style “stese”.
The prosecutors, who challenged the acquittals of 16 defendants, dispute the “unreliability” that the Bari Court attributed to the declarations of the justice collaborators, arguing that the inconsistencies in the different stories depend on the fact that the “repentants” after having “received the fundamental confidence” about Signorile’s involvement in the Gelao murder, “did not pay attention to other aspects. It is well known – say the prosecutors – that asking too many questions about such delicate things is not appropriate, because it would arouse suspicions of excessive curiosity close to denunciation. The rule of the Camorra states that one must limit oneself to receiving confidence.”
Another element in support of the responsibility of Signorile and Monti (the latter also found positive for the stub) derives from the retaliations against them in the months following the crime: «it is therefore considered an omitted motivation – say the anti-mafia magistrates in the appeal – not to consider an element strongly indicative of the fact, peaceful, of the conviction of the entire Palermiti clan of their responsibility and their obstinate will to make an attempt on their lives, to destroy their assets where the only reasonable reason is that they were considered part of the commendation that he had killed Gelao, a brotherly friend of Domenico Milella”.
And it is Signorile himself, intercepted in prison during an interview with his family, who confirmed it, humming a Neapolitan song to send a clear message to Busco, on whom there was a “bounty of 500 thousand euros” that “everyone was talking about, in criminal and non-criminal environments”. The song read: «three months have passed (since the De Santis murder, ed.), what are you waiting for to get in the car, come to Bari and, if necessary, sacrifice yourself? Do you want to wait until I or someone else comes out?
Then there is the chapter of the “stese”, the armed expeditions in the streets of the neighborhood. According to the DDA it is “unbelievable, unreasonable and illogical”, as instead maintained by the Court of Assizes of Appeal, that “in the context of a war without holds barred between mafia clans, twenty people decided to mobilize, including some of the most important exponents of the criminal groups in question, aboard at least twelve motorcycles, simply to explode fireworks, without any intimidating force against individuals accustomed to an indiscriminate use of violence”, highlighting also that in Bari “the lighting of fireworks is commonly used for celebrations of various kinds and certainly not to scare dangerous criminal figures”. A gesture defined as “ridiculous” that “even a child could have done, without such a mobilization”.
It will be up to the Court of Cassation to evaluate these and other elements and decide whether the acquittals should be annulled.
