Gaspare Mutolo

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Gaspare Mutolo (born February 5, 1940 in Palermo ) is a former Sicilian mafioso and drug dealer . In 1992 he became a " Pentito " and key witness .

Life

Early years

Gaspare Mutolo grew up in Pallavacino and Partanna Mondello in Palermo. He worked as a mechanic and committed car theft. At that time he already had connections to the Cosa Nostra , as there were already so-called "men of honor" in his family.

He was arrested for the first time in 1965; in Palermo Ucciardone prison he shared a cell with Salvatore Riina , an important mafioso from Corleone . Mutolo understood that Riina held an important position of power and tried to win the sympathy of Riina, for example by letting him win at a card game. This was successful and Mutolo was allowed to accompany Riina on his daily walk in the prison yard, which Mutolo felt was a great honor. Riina began questioning Mutolo about his criminal activities; then he recommended the book "I Beati Paoli" to Mutolo, which had a great influence on the self-image of the 'men of honor'. When Mutolo was transferred to a prison in the interior of Sicily, Riina gave him a note for the director; as a result, Mutolo was treated excellently at all times and received special rights in prison.

Cosa Nostra

In 1973 Mutolo, who had meanwhile been released, was accepted as a full member of the Cosa Nostra. He joined the Partanna-Mondello family, led by Rosario Riccobono . Riccobono was one of the leading bosses in Palermo and a member of the Mafia Commission . In Naples and Palermo he worked for a while as a driver for Riina, whose trust he has enjoyed since they were in prison together. Within his family, Mutolo became Riccobono's right-hand man.

In 1976 Mutolo was arrested again. This time, he temporarily shared a cell with the old Corleonesi boss, Luciano Liggio , who had been in custody since 1974 and has since been represented by Riina and Bernardo Provenzano . He was also sitting in a cell with the 'man of honor' Pietro Vernengo; both established close contacts with the Turkish drug trafficker Yasar Avni Mussullulu and Koh Bak Kin, a Chinese drug trafficker who had bases in Singapore and Bangkok . After their release, both worked closely with the Cosa Nostra in the heroin trade in the early 1980s .

Thanks to his close ties to the Corleonesi, Mutolo survived the Second Mafia War from 1981 to 1983, in which the Corleonesians gained absolute control over the Sicilian Mafia and eliminated all their opponents. Mutolo's boss Riccobono and many of his followers, however, were murdered on behalf of Riina, although Riccobono had sided with the Corleones at the beginning of the war and betrayed his former allies. Riccobono himself was allegedly strangled by Totò Riina himself shortly before Christmas 1982 following a feast in Bernardo Brusca's villa . At the same time, some of Riccobono's closest confidants were murdered that same evening.

When Mutolo was released, he went back into the heroin trade on a large scale and organized the transport of heroin to the United States . The contacts he made in prison now benefited him. The heroin came mainly from the Golden Triangle . In 1981 he organized the transport of 400 kilograms of heroin to Venezuela and the USA. In the USA, half of the delivery was received by the New York Gambino family , the other half went to the Sicilian Cuntrera-Caruana family, which had its bases mainly in Venezuela, but also in Canada .

Pentito

As a result of the investigating magistrate Giovanni Falcone against the Sicilian part of the Pizza Connection , Mutolo also came into the investigators' field of vision. His phone was now constantly tapped; in this way the authorities learned of the close cooperation between Riccobonos and Mutolo and the Mafia of Catania and their boss Nitto Santapaola . In 1982, just before he could organize another large drug shipment, Mutolo was arrested. In the so-called mammoth trial from 1986 to 1987, he was sentenced to 16 years in prison. From the end of 1991 he began, according to his own statement, to think about cooperating with the state and becoming a pentito (it: repentant). In the spring of 1992 he contacted the authorities and indicated that he was willing to give evidence; he insisted on being interrogated by either Giovanni Falcone or Paolo Borsellino , whom he himself had come to know as incorruptible representatives of the law. Since Falcone was no longer a judge at that time, but was working in the Ministry of Justice, he was questioned by examining magistrate Borsellino from May 1992.

However, like Giovanni Falcone shortly before on May 23, Borsellino was murdered on July 19, 1992, together with five of his six bodyguards, when a car bomb detonated. Mutolo was not intimidated by this, but now testified even more unconditionally. As a result of his statements and those of Giuseppe Marchese , 56 suspects were arrested in May 1993. He also testified in the United States in the trial against members of the New York Gambino family and revealed details about the close cooperation between the American La Cosa Nostra and the Sicilian Cosa Nostra. Mutolo was probably the most important Pentito since Francesco Marino Mannoia revealed himself to Giovanni Falcone in 1989.

In his statements, Mutolo seriously incriminated many politicians and representatives of the state: The secret service agent and deputy head of the SISDE , Bruno Contrada , was arrested because of his statements; Mutolo accused him of betraying impending raids on the Cosa Nostra while he was in Palermo. This enabled Salvatore Riina to evade arrest at least once. He also accused the former 7-time Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti , the former mayors of Palermo Salvatore Lima and Vito Ciancimino and the brothers Ignazio and Nino Salvo of having worked closely with the Mafia for decades. He also burdened the bankers Michele Sindona (the “savior of the lira ” according to Giulio Andreotti) and Roberto Calvi, who have since been murdered, with working with the mafia and with money laundering . He also testified that, in 1970 murdered journalist Mauro De Mauro was on behalf of the leader of "mafia perdente" (of the Second Mafia War inferior minority faction within the Cosa Nostra), Stefano Bontade , was kidnapped and later murdered because he controversial facts (probably had researched the entanglement of the Cosa Nostra in Italian politics and the secret service sphere).

He called the judge Corrado Carnevale the best assurance of the Cosa Nostra against convictions; Carnevale was known as a "judgment killer" because he had repeatedly overturned convictions against felons for the smallest formal errors . He also accused Domenico Signorino of having contacts with "certain circles that I know well". Signorino was one of the prosecutors in the mammoth trial and a. Requested 20 life sentences, which made Mutolo's accusation doubtful. Signorino committed suicide shortly afterwards; this led to a controversial media debate about the public disclosure of statements by the Pentiti and the possible unforeseeable consequences. After Riina was arrested in January 1993, Mutolo gave further statements on the record; he warned the authorities of upcoming serious attacks by the Corleonese on mainland Italy. Indeed, these attacks occurred shortly afterwards in Florence , Rome and Milan , leaving dozens of deaths and injuries. Mutolo himself confessed to having committed over 20 murders for the Cosa Nostra.

present

Gaspare Mutolo currently lives with his family in an undisclosed location under the protection of the Italian Witness Protection Program . After the arrest of the “boss of the bosses” Bernardo Provenzano in 2006, Mutolo said: “If the Pope dies, you can always choose a new one and in this way the Church remains stable.”

Web links

literature

Individual evidence

  1. John Follain: The last Godfathers. Hodder & Stoughton, London 2008, ISBN 978-0-340-97919-8 .
  2. ^ Alison Jamieson: Cooperation Between Organized Crime Groups Around The World (PDF; 203 kB). Yearbook for International Security Policy 1999, December 1999, ISBN 3-8132-0599-1 .
  3. a b Alexander Stille : The judges: Death, the Mafia and the Italian Republic. CH Beck, Munich, 1997, ISBN 3-406-42303-5 .