Giovanni Falcone

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Portrait of Giovanni Falcones (drawing of unknown authorship)
Giovanni Falcone (2nd from right)

Giovanni Falcone (born May 18, 1939 in Palermo , † May 23, 1992 in Capaci near Palermo) was an Italian lawyer and active in the fight against the Cosa Nostra . He is a symbol of the fight against organized crime in Sicily .

Origin and education

Giovanni Falcone was born in Palermo in 1939 to Arturo Falcone and Luisa Bentivegna. The house where the family was born, where he spent his childhood, was in the residential area of ​​today's Piazza Magione , which was completely destroyed during the Second World War . As a child, Falcone was friends with Paolo Borsellino , who had his home in the adjacent Via Vetriera . For a short time he attended the Naval Academy in Livorno . He then studied law and graduated in 1961. He then worked as a lawyer for three years and was appointed judge in 1964 .

Mafia trial

At the beginning of the 1980s, Falcone, as investigating judge, set up a special commission to combat the Mafia together with the then chief judge on the Supreme Judicial Council, Rocco Chinnici and Liliana Ferraro from the Ministry of Justice in Palermo . The organization, which is widespread in Sicily, made it clear again and again through numerous attacks on the investigators that it would not allow such disturbances of its power and business; Chinnici was bombed in 1983.

In 1984 Falcone was able to persuade the Mafia great Tommaso Buscetta to break the commandment of Omertà and make himself available as a key witness. Buscetta's statements were of great value to investigators and resulted in the imprisonment of many mafiosi. Undeterred, Falcone, who was under constant police protection, led the so-called Maxi-Trial against around 400 members of the Mafia from February 1986 onwards , which lasted 22 months and many of whom were sentenced to long prison terms due to the proceedings he had prepared.

The place of the negotiation was a specially built bunker building inside the prison in Palermo, which could have withstood even a rocket fire. During the process, the facility was secured by around 500 security guards and a tank, and the airspace was monitored. Through his investigations, Falcone penetrated to the core of the Mafia. Further mass trials followed in the next few years after Falcone was able to exploit the statements of other confessed Mafiosi. In 1991 Falcone moved to the Ministry of Justice.

attack

Monument in Capaci
Remembrance of Falcone and Borsellino on demonstration banners
Memorial plaque to Falcone and Borsellino at Palermo Airport

On May 23, 1992, Falcone was killed by a bomb while on the way to his weekend home near Palermo, along with his wife Francesca Morvillo , a juvenile judge, and three bodyguards; the driver Giuseppe Costanza only survived by chance but was seriously injured. The attackers deposited 500 kg of TNT explosives in a drainage pipe near Capaci under the A29 motorway and detonated them remotely. A red granite column on the highway today commemorates the attack. Falcone was buried in the grave chapel of his family in the Sant'Orsola cemetery in Palermo.

A leader of the Cosa Nostra, Giovanni Brusca , who was arrested in 1996, had to answer for the attack . According to several Pentiti , the assassination was commissioned by Salvatore "Totò" Riina , who was then "boss of the bosses" .

Twenty years after the attack, in November 2012, the police arrested the suspected supplier of the explosives, the fisherman Cosimo D'Amato. The confession of a former mafioso had put the investigators on his track. According to police sources, D'Amato helped extract the TNT used in the attack from World War II bombs that he had fished from the sea.

consequences

The assassination attempt on Falcone plunged Italy into a serious crisis, not least because of the legitimate suspicion that his arrival at Palermo airport, which was kept top secret, had been betrayed by employees in the inner circle of state power.

On July 19, 1992, Paolo Borsellino , a colleague and closest confidante of Falcones, fell victim to an explosive attack in Palermo, along with four companions and one companion.

Falcone gained great popularity, especially in Sicily, for his fight against organized crime. The Palermo-Punta Raisi airport was renamed Palermo-Punta Raisi Falcone e Borsellino .

In 1992, the Falcones family established the Giovanni e Francesca Falcone Foundation in Palermo . The primary goal of the foundation is to promote cultural activities, study and research to promote a culture that is independent of the Mafia in society. In 1996 the foundation was granted advisory status as a non-governmental organization at ECOSOC (United Nations Economic and Social Council).

On March 30, 2010, an asteroid discovered in 1999 was named after Giovanni Falcone: (60183) Falcone .

On May 22, 2017, one day before the 25th anniversary of the attack on Falcone, Mafia boss Giuseppe Dainotti was murdered on the street in Palermo. Dainotti was considered the right-hand man of the Mafia great Salvatore Cancemi , who was involved in the attack on Falcone. Although Dainotti was apparently the victim of an internal mafia conflict, the Palermi public prosecutor in charge described the attack as a warning to the state: "As soon as someone claims that the mafia no longer exists or has been broken, something happens that confirms that it is still there."

Literature and films

Related topics

Web links

Commons : Giovanni Falcone  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Hickey, Eric: Encyclopedia of Murder and Violent Crime, Thousand Oaks / London / New Delhi 2003, p. 159.
  2. ↑ one day - Zeitgeschichten at: Spiegel Online, report from May 22, 2012 Murder of Mafia hunter Falcone: death by remote detonator
  3. ↑ Stefan Troendle: Another arrest 20 years after the murder of Mafia hunters. www.tagesschau.de, November 12, 2012, archived from the original on December 26, 2012 ; accessed on June 2, 2016 .
  4. ↑ Italian mafia boss gunned down while riding his bike in Sicily. In: The Guardian . May 22, 2017, accessed October 27, 2017 .
  5. ↑ Shot off the bike from the Mafia boss. In: Spiegel Online . May 23, 2017. Retrieved October 27, 2017 .
personal data
SURNAME Falcone, Giovanni
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Italian lawyer and judge
DATE OF BIRTH May 18, 1939
PLACE OF BIRTH Palermo
DATE OF DEATH May 23, 1992
Place of death Capaci near Palermo