Bernardo Provenzano

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Bernardo Provenzano (1959)

Bernardo "Zu Binnu" Provenzano (born January 31, 1933 in Corleone ; † July 13, 2016 in Milan ) was a member of the Sicilian Cosa Nostra . For about two decades he was the head of the Corleonesi , a clan from the notorious Mafia stronghold Corleone, and he was considered a suspected " Capo di tutti i capi " (Italian for "boss of the bosses"). Because of his merciless determination as a mass murderer , he was also referred to as Binnu u tratturi (Sicilian: "Binnu the tractor"), who visually - as if he were a tractor with a roller attached - flatten his victims en masse.

biography

Early years

Bernardo Provenzano was born on January 31, 1933 in Corleone as the third of seven children into a farming family that had not previously had any contact with the Cosa Nostra. Already in his early years he worked with his father Angelo as a farm worker in the fields and left school at the age of 10.

In his late teens, he and a few friends, including Salvatore "Totò" Riina , joined Luciano Liggio , a senior follower of local mafia boss Michele Navarra . Provenzano quickly acquired the reputation of an unscrupulous thug who should be better watched out for. At the beginning of the 1950s, Provenzano is said to have been accepted at an inauguration ceremony in the Cosa Nostra.

In 1954, Provenzano was supposed to be drafted for military service, but was declared unfit.

Rise of the Corleonesi

Michele Navarra was murdered on August 2, 1958. The murder was preceded by a conflict between the rising power-hungry Liggio and the established Patriarch Navarre. In the war that followed, in which Liggio and his followers systematically eliminated Navarre's followers, Provenzano was one of Liggio's best killers. Liggio is said to have said of Provenzano later: “He shoots like a god, but has the brain of a chicken.” Corleone became known as the “tombstone” as a result of the ongoing violence. A bomb attack was carried out three days later on the newspaper L'Ora , which had published a report on Liggio and his supporters with the headline "Pericoloso" (Italian: "dangerous").

On September 10, 1963, Provenzano murdered one of the last supporters of Navarre and immediately withdrew from the scene.

In the famous massacre in Viale Lazio on December 10, 1969, he personally killed Michele Cavataio , who was one of the main people responsible for the First Mafia War . After Liggio was arrested in Milan in 1974 , Liggio decided Salvatore Riina and Provenzano to be his joint successors. Riina was to be the first to become the new boss of the Corleonesians and to be replaced by Provenzano after two years. Riina did not give up this office; Provenzano agreed to this. Since then, Provenzano has been considered Riina's right-hand man.

In the course of a merciless Mafia war from 1981 to 1983, in which around 1,000 Mafiosi died, the Corleonesi rose to become the leading Mafia family in Sicily. Bernardo Provenzano ran a kind of execution site in a disused nail factory in the vicinity of Bagheria, which in certain circles was known as " Campo di Sterminio di Bagheria " ( Bagheria concentration camp ) and in which 100 people were probably murdered. Riina and Provenzano henceforth dominated the Cosa Nostra; both sat on the Sicilian Mafia Commission at the same time . In January 1993 Riina was arrested and finally convicted, among other things for the assassinations of Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino in May 1992. After the arrest of Leoluca Bagarella , the brother-in-law and successor of Riina, boss of the Corleonesi and thus de facto " Capo dei Capi ” .

Life underground

From the early 1960s until his arrest in 2006, Provenzano was no longer seen in public. Since there was only one mug shot from his youth, the Italian police only published a phantom image for years . Insiders described Provenzano as very suspicious and shy of people.

While Riina was making a name for itself with bloody attacks on the state, Provenzano initially worked as a debt collector for a credit company that was little more than a money laundering facility for drug deals and he pounced on the contracts that were to be awarded in the island's construction and waste industry were.

When his wife and children left their hiding place in 1992, there were suspicions that he was no longer alive. In October 2003, he underwent a prostate operation (allegedly at the expense of the Italian state) in a private clinic ( la clinique Casamance ) in Aubagne near Marseille ( France ), which the investigators found out too late. In a raid in several places in Sicily in January 2005, 46 suspects were arrested, but not in Provenzano. The prison terms he was sentenced to in absentia add up to 250 years.

With Provenzano's leadership, the Sicilian Mafia could be relatively quiet as he tried to keep the Cosa Nostra out of the headlines and to consolidate them as best he could. He was able to halt the wave of Mafia renegades and he gave the care of prisoners back their traditionally high position on the priority list of the Cosa Nostra.

Again and again he changed hiding places and among other things it was said that Provenzano had disguised himself as a bishop. There were no computers or cell phones in his hiding places. He communicated exclusively through pizzini - small, closely written messages folded to the size of a fingernail, in which he gave instructions to his adepts and held the strings of organization firmly in hand.

arrest

After 43 years on the "flight", Bernardo Provenzano, at the age of 73, was found on April 11, 2006 together with another person from the Italian Polizia di Stato in a shabby shed ("un casolare diroccato e isolato accanto una stalla e un caseificio ”), about 2 km from Corleone city center. His arrest was preceded by a two-week surveillance . In his hiding place there were about 200 small secret messages -like list, called Pizzini , he communicated by means of which to the outside world. Provenzano is said to have betrayed himself by such a note, since the police managed in the meantime to monitor the relay-like forwarding of the notes to his followers. Following his arrest, three other people were arrested on charges of looking after Provenzano and relaying his messages.

A bugged phone call put the investigators on the right track, reported Italian media. A shop steward agreed with his interlocutor about when he should bring the clean laundry to the "boss". There was also a typewriter in his hiding place, which he allegedly used to write his messages. According to the police, Provenzano should not have resisted and admitted his identity. A DNA comparison with tissue samples that were secured after his hospital stay in France in 2003 showed, according to media reports, that he was indeed the long-sought Mafia boss. His lawyer Salvatore Traina had stated two weeks earlier that his client had probably died years ago.

When he was arrested, Provenzano is said to have said to the officers present: "You do not know what you are doing". There was heavy speculation in the media about how this statement should be interpreted. Provenzano was silent about the authorities, it was also unlikely that he would break the Omertà . It has been suggested that a new, younger generation of Mafia bosses is ready. A possible successor is Matteo "u Siccu" Messina Denaro (* 1962) from the province of Trapani, Provenzano had referred to him in a pizzino as "il mio erede" (my legacy). However, Provenzano has decentralized the Cosa Nostra and the following years give reason to suspect that there will be no single boss of the bosses.

Last years

In intensified solitary confinement, Provenzano is said to have slowly become melancholy. His lawyer could not enforce exemption from prison. In 2010 doctors diagnosed hepatitis C, memory loss and prostate cancer. In March 2011, a bladder tumor was found. In late 2012, Provenzano fell into a temporary coma after falling repeatedly in Parma prison. All pending proceedings against him were then suspended because, according to medical reports, he was no longer able to negotiate. In May 2012, a correctional officer surprised him by pulling a plastic bag over his head. Some thought it was a suicide attempt, others thought it was a staging.

Due to his poor health, Provenzano was transferred to a hospital in Milan in 2014 under the strictest security precautions. He died there on July 13, 2016 at the age of 83. "Although he was just vegetating, Provenzano was forced to the strictest detention right up to the end," criticized his lawyer. In fact, Provenzano died four years ago.

meaning

The importance of Provenzano has long been underestimated. He is charged with 50 murders, Falcone called him the most bloodthirsty killer of the Mafia. But it was not until 1993, after various Pentiti (Italian: penitent, penitent; i.e. former Mafiosi as key witnesses ) testified that the search was given the highest priority. After he was able to escape arrest again and again, the chief mafia hunter Piero Grasso , among others, charged that Provenzano had been protected by politicians, entrepreneurs and police officers.

In 2004, the film Il fantasma di Corleone ( The Phantom of Corleone ) was directed by Marco Amenta , and it deals with the question of why Provenzano has never been caught for all these years. A central statement in the documentation is the story told by Michele Riccio, a high-ranking carabiniere, that when he could have arrested Provenzano, he was called back by a higher authority (Colonel Mori). The film argued that Provenzano was able to escape for so long, not least because of the protection of senior state officials. This was confirmed in Amenta's film by Guido Lo Forte , public prosecutor in Palermo.

The City Council of Corleone has declared the day of his arrest (April 11, 2006) a public holiday and wants to name a street Via 11 Aprile in honor of the arrest.

In February 2006 , on the instructions of Public Prosecutor Roberto Scarpinato , the Italian police seized the houses, land and accounts of Provenzano and Salvatore Lo Piccolo valued at 150 million US dollars.

Films and documentaries

literature

Preliminary remark by the editor: "This lexicon is largely based on keywords that repeatedly appeared in the pizzini - slips of paper that were folded several times and sealed with sticky tape - through which he (= Provenzano) communicated with his followers."
  • Giovanni Falcone and Marcelle Padovani: Inside Mafia . Herbig Actuell, Munich 1992, ISBN 3-7766-1765-9
  • Alexander Stille : The Judges, Death, the Mafia and the Italian Republic CH Beck Verlag, 2003:
Detailed and well-founded presentation of the background and history of the Mafia with special consideration of their entanglement with Italian politics. A separate chapter deals with the Corleonese Mafia and the rise of Salvatore Riina and Bernardo Provenzano.
Background information on the Sicilian Mafia and on Provenzano in particular (chapter The tractor appears , pp. 501–509).
Themes are the Cosa Nostra and Provenzano's life

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Spiegel Online - On the death of the Mafia godfather Provenzano
  2. ↑ a b The Telegraph - Bernardo Provenzano, Mafia boss known as 'The Tractor' - obituary
  3. ^ Leone Zingales - Provenzano: il re di cosa nostra. Pellegrini Editore
  4. ^ Spiegel Online - Der neue Herr
  5. ↑ BBC News - Profile: Bernardo Provenzano
  6. ↑ a b c Die Welt - The Godfather of Corleone: He was in hiding for 43 years, now Bernardo Provenzano has been arrested.
  7. ^ La Repubblica - Dai boss al pizzo, ecco la saga dei Cavataio
  8. ^ NY Times - Luciano Liggio; Mafia Boss, 68
  9. ↑ Enrico Deaglio: Patria 1978-2010. Il Saggiatore, 2010 p. 111
  10. ^ Pietro Grasso: Storie di sangue, amici e fantasmi: Ricordi di mafia. Feltrinelli Editore. 2017.
  11. ↑ Carefree cries replace screams at Cosa Nostra 'Death Factory' The Telegraph. August 22, 2004
  12. ↑ L'Espresso - Totò Riina e Leoluca Bagarella, nella foto inedita il sorriso del male
  13. ↑ La Repubblica - In trappola il vicere 'di cosa nostra
  14. ^ Neue Zürcher - Zeitung The most wanted mafia boss arrested
  15. ↑ a b c Kurier - "Boss der Bosse" dies in custody
  16. ↑ Frankfurter Allgemeine - Provenzano's hiding place
  17. ↑ The world - you do not know what you are doing
  18. ↑ Filmitalia - The Phantom of Corleone
  19. ↑ Mafia treasures confiscated. In: Weser-Kurier No. 45 of February 22, 2008, p. 7.
personal data
SURNAME Provenzano, Bernardo
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Provenzano, To Binnu
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Sicilian mafioso, leading figure of the Cosa Nostra
DATE OF BIRTH January 31, 1933
PLACE OF BIRTH Corleone , Sicily
DATE OF DEATH July 13, 2016
Place of death Milan