Giovanni Brusca

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Giovanni Brusca (born February 20, 1957 in San Giuseppe Jato , Metropolitan City of Palermo , Italy ) is a former member of the Sicilian Cosa Nostra . He was instrumental in the assassination attempt on mafia hunter Giovanni Falcone on May 23, 1992. After his arrest in 1996 he cooperated with the Italian judiciary.

family

Giovanni Brusca was - like his father Bernardo Brusca (1929-2000) and his two brothers Emanuele and Enzo - a member of the Mafia in San Giuseppe Jato . Even his great-grandfather and grandfather were "men of honor", that is, members of the mafia. San Giuseppe Jato has a rural character; the local mafia family was led by Antonio Salamone . Giovanni's father, who was a farmer, was his deputy for many years. The Bruscas worked very closely with the Corleonesians , the mafia family from the mountain town of Corleone , and were part of their alliance. Bernardo Brusca was a loyal follower of Totò Riina for over 20 years .

Salamone, on the other hand, was more of a supporter of Stefano Bontade , who was in opposition to the Corleonesians. After Salomone went to Brazil in 1974, Giovanni Brusca's father initially took over the reign of the clan. In the course of time he managed to completely seize power. He found support in this among the Corleonesians under Riina, who were able to take a dominant position within the Cosa Nostra at the end of the 1970s. After his arrest in the early 1980s, Tommaso Buscetta spoke appraisingly about Bernardo Brusca several times and said, among other things, that he was one of the "most vile people since Nero". Until the 1980s, the Brusca family was only known to a few.

Ascent in the Cosa Nostra

Giovanni Brusca was made a "man of honor" in 1976 at the age of 19; he had previously committed a murder for the Corleonesi | Corleonesians. His “godfather” at the acceptance ceremony was Totò Riina. At the end of the 1970s he worked for a while as a driver for the Corleonese Bernardo Provenzano . When the Corleonesians destroyed their opponents in the Second Mafia War from 1981-1983 and thus achieved absolute supremacy, the ambitious Bruscas in the family of San Giuseppe Jato also took sole control. Salamone surrendered to the police so as not to run the risk of being murdered. Brusca worked as a killer for the Corleonesians. As a loyal supporter of the “boss of the bosses” Salvatore Riina, he rose to “capomandamento” in 1989, the boss of three Mafia families when his father was arrested. He also became a member of the so-called "Commission" .

When the Corleonesians began to wage war against the state in 1992, Brusca was already one of the organization's most prominent killers; he had murdered the boss of the Alcamo family , Vincenzo Milazzo, when he began to oppose Riina. It was also Brusca who packed around 400 kilograms of explosives for the assassination attempt on the lawyer and mafia hunter Giovanni Falcone in washing powder cans and deposited them in a drainpipe under the motorway near Palermo . The bomb he detonated killed the judge, his wife and three of his bodyguards on May 23, 1992 near Capaci near Palermo. Brusca was also involved in the murder of Paolo Borsellino ; In the evening of autumn 1992 he shot Ignazio Salvo, who in recent years, like Salvatore Lima , had proven incapable of protecting the Cosa Nostra from persecution. He committed both murders on behalf of Salvatore Riina.

There was a strong reaction from the Italian state and in 1993 Riina was arrested. As a result, the Corleonesians and Brusca began carrying out terrorist attacks on the Italian mainland. Bombs exploded in Florence, Milan and Rome, killing and injuring dozens of people and causing damage running into the millions. After Riina's successor Leoluca Bagarella was arrested in 1995, the new boss Provenzano ended the assassinations and attacks; he ordered a "Pax Mafiosa".

Brusca was also the one who kidnapped the son of Santino Di Matteo, who was cooperating with the police , on November 23, 1993 when the boy was twelve years old. He and members of his clan held the boy in a shed for two years and three months and passed photos to the father in order to force him to end his cooperation with the authorities. The father stuck to his statements. Brusca had the now almost 15-year-old strangled on January 11, 1996 and the corpse dissolved in acid. Years later, Brusca said that nothing had been achieved by the cruel act. He considers the kidnapping to be the beginning of the Corleonese decline.

Since the arrest

On May 20, 1996, 400 police surrounded the house where Brusca was hiding with his family in Agrigento Province and arrested him and his brother Enzo. He soon began to cooperate with the authorities. He then confessed that he had killed "a lot more than a hundred, but certainly less than two hundred" people. Brusca's nickname was mammasantissima - a terrible Mafioso, and lo scannacristiani "the man who cuts people's throats" known ("The word 'Christ' is synonymous with 'man' in Sicilian , but in the Mafia it means 'man of honor'" .).

For his involvement in the assassination attempt at Capaci, he was sentenced on September 26, 1997 by the jury court in Caltanissetta to a prison term of 26 years. Because of his cooperation with the authorities, he was able to avoid life imprisonment. This was followed in July 1998 by further convictions of 18 years imprisonment for the murder of Ignazio Salvo and in February 1999 for 30 years imprisonment for the murder of the boy Giuseppe Di Matteo by the Palermo jury. In 2000, Brusca was officially granted legal clerk status. As a result, he received relief from prison.

Because of his good conduct, he was also given at least 80 releases during his imprisonment. In 2004, he was arrested on one of these open spaces because he was caught using a cell phone while talking on the phone, which violated the requirements. After finding 180,000 euros in his wife's apartment, he was again charged with extortion in 2010 and suspected of continuing his criminal business from prison. The charge was eventually downgraded to coercion. In 2019, Brusca's request to move to house arrest was rejected by the Court of Cassation .

On May 31, 2021, Brusca was released from Rebibbia prison in Rome after 25 years in prison, but has to fulfill certain conditions of the libertà vigilata (“monitored freedom”) ordered by the court of appeal in Milan for another four years . At the same time he is under witness protection ; his whereabouts are kept secret and his true identity is veiled. Relatives of Brusca's victims and some Italian politicians criticized the early release from prison.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Attilio Bolzoni: Gli spietati discepoli di Riina. January 21, 1997, accessed June 3, 2021 (Italian).
  2. ↑ John Dickie : Cosa Nostra. The history of the mafia . Verlag S. Fischer , Frankfurt 2007 ( book2look.com - quoted from the excerpt from the e-book linked here).
  3. ↑ Sentenza della Corte di Assise di Caltanisetta n.10/97 del 26 September 1997 , p. 1367. ( digitized version )
  4. ↑ a b Dalla strage di Capaci alla scarcerazione: la storia di Giovanni Brusca. June 1, 2021, accessed June 3, 2021 (Italian).
  5. ↑ Sentenza della Corte di Assise di Palermo del 15 luglio 1998 , p. 689. ( digitized version )
  6. ↑ Enrico Bellariva: Trent 'anni per Brusca boia del piccolo Di Matteo. In: repubblica.it. February 11, 1999, accessed June 3, 2021 (Italian).
  7. ↑ Sandra Figliuolo: Ha scontato la sua pena, dopo 25 anni torna libero il boss pentito Giovanni Brusca. In: palermotoday.it. May 31, 2021, accessed June 1, 2021 (Italian).
  8. ↑ Ancora un no dalla Cassazione ai domiciliari - "Resti in carcere" . In: La Repubblica . October 8, 2019 (Italian, repubblica.it [accessed June 2, 2021]).
  9. ↑ a b FAZ.net: Mafia boss released from prison after 25 years
  10. ^ Lirio Abbate: Torna libero l'ex boss Giovanni Brusca. In: espresso.repubblica.it. May 31, 2021, accessed June 1, 2021 (Italian).
  11. ^ Mafia, Giovanni Brusca torna libero: lascia il carcere dopo 25 anni. Adnkronos, May 31, 2021, accessed June 3, 2021 (Italian).
personal data
SURNAME Brusca, Giovanni
SHORT DESCRIPTION Italian member of the Sicilian Cosa Nostra
DATE OF BIRTH February 20, 1957
PLACE OF BIRTH San Giuseppe Jato , Metropolitan City of Palermo , Italy