Ciaculli massacre
In the Ciaculli massacre on June 30, 1963, seven police officers and soldiers from the Carabinieri and the Italian army were killed by a car bomb in Ciaculli , a suburb of Palermo . Those killed were supposed to defuse the explosive device after being informed by an anonymous phone call. The bomb was destined for Salvatore "Ciaschiteddu" Greco , the chairman of the first Sicilian Mafia Commission and the head of the influential Mafia family from Ciaculli. The mob boss Pietro Torretta was identified as the alleged commissioner of the attack .
The massacre was the culmination of a bloody mafia war between rival families in Palermo in the 1960s, known as the first major mafia war . This was about controlling the new business opportunities that arose with heavy urbanization and the heroin trade in North America. The licentiousness with which the conflict was carried out reached unprecedented proportions, claiming 68 lives from 1961 to 1963.
prehistory
In the 1950s, the Cosa Nostra had an increasing interest in public construction projects, land speculation, the transport industry and the wholesale sale of fruit, vegetables, meat and fish in the markets of Palermo, a then prosperous city whose population increased by 100,000 between 1951 and 1961 alone .
At this time, connections developed between Mafiosi and a new generation of politicians from the Democrazia Cristiana , such as Salvo Lima and Vito Ciancimino . Lima had ties to Angelo La Barbera , Tommaso Buscetta and the great contractor Francesco Vassallo .
The period from 1958 to 1964, when Lima was Mayor of Palermo and Ciancimino Assessor for Public Works, was later referred to as "Sacco di Palermo" ( sacking of Palermo ) (alluding to the historical Sacco di Roma ). In five years, 4,000 building licenses were issued, more than half of them to three retirees with no ties to the building trade. The construction boom led to the destruction of the urban green belt. Prominent villas have also been replaced by rental houses.
First Mafia War
The first major Mafia war broke out in December 1962 after the loss of a ship shipment of heroin and the murder of Calcedonio Di Pisa , an ally of the Greco family. The Grecos blamed the brothers Angelo and Salvatore La Barbera for the attack.
The massacre turned the internal conflict into a war against the mafia. It led to the first concentrated anti-Mafia campaign in post-war Italian history. 1,200 Mafiosi were arrested over a period of ten weeks, many of whom were withdrawn from circulation for five to six years. The Mafia Commission was broken up and the mafiosi who escaped arrest fled to the United States, Canada, Argentina, Brazil and Venezuela. The chairman Salvatore Greco fled to the Venezuelan capital Caracas , where he later - still active in the Cosa Nostra - also died.
As a result of the massacre, the Italian Parliament passed a law in December 1962 that created an anti-Mafia commission. The commission met for the first time on July 6, 1963 and the final report was published in 1976.
Those responsible for the massacre
According to statements by Pentito Tommaso Buscetta , Michele Cavataio , the boss of the Acquasanta district of Palermo, was responsible for the attack. Cavataio had lost a war against the Grecos in the 1950s and lost control of an important wholesale market. He murdered Di Pisa knowing that the La Barberas would be held responsible and war would ensue. He further fueled the war with further bomb attacks and murders.
Cavataio was supported by several other Mafia families who refused to accept the growing power of the commission, which was at the expense of the individual families. He was murdered on December 10, 1969 in Viale Lazio in Palermo by a command of the Mafia in retaliation for his deeds in 1963. The command included Bernardo Provenzano , Calogero Bagarella (a brother of Leoluca Bagarella , the step brother of Totò Riina ), Emanuele D'Agostino from Stefano Bontade's Santa Maria di Gesù family, Gaetano Grado and Damiano Caruso, a soldier of Giuseppe Di Cristina , the Riesi mafia boss . The attack became known as the Viale Lazio massacre .
Several bosses had decided to kill Cavataio, instigated by Salvatore Greco. According to Buscetta, the composition of the murder squad should make it clear that all large families were behind the attack and that it was not the work of a single family. The bloodbath in Viale Lazio marked the end of the "pax mafiosa" that had existed since the Ciaculli massacre.
Victims of the massacre
The seven fatalities in the massacre were Mario Malausa, Silvio Corrao, Calogero Vaccaro, Eugenio Altomare and Mario Farbelli from the Carabinieri and Pasquale Nuccio and Giorgio Ciacci, both soldiers of the Italian army .
literature
- John Dickie: Cosa Nostra. A history of the Sicilian Mafia , Coronet, London 2004, ISBN 0-340-82435-2
- Alison Jamieson: The Antimafia: Italy's fight against organized crime , Macmillan, London 2000, ISBN 0-333-80158-X .
- Jane C. Schneider & Peter T. Schneider: Reversible Destiny: Mafia, Antimafia, Struggle for Palermo: Mafia, Antimafia and the Struggle for Palermo , University of California Press, Berkeley 2003, ISBN 0-520-23609-2
- Gaia Servadio: Mafioso. A history of the Mafia from its origins to the present day , Secker & Warburg, London 1976, ISBN 0-440-55104-8
- Alexander Stille : Excellent Cadavers. The Mafia and the Death of the First Italian Republic , Vintage, New York 1995, ISBN 0-09-959491-9
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Jane Schneider & Peter Schneider: Reversible Destiny , pp. 65–66
- ↑ a b Alexander Stille: Excellent Cadavers , pp. 103-104
- ↑ a b Jane Schneider & Peter Schneider: Reversible Destiny, pp. 14-19
- ^ John Dickie: Cosa Nostra, pp. 311-312
- ↑ Gaia Servadio: Mafioso, p. 181
- ↑ John Dickie: Cosa Nostra, pp. 315-16
- ↑ Antimafia Duemila: Provenzano a giudizio per la strage di Viale Lazio ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. dated March 28, 2007; (Dead link)
- ^ John Dickie: Cosa Nostra, p. 328
- ^ Antimafia Duemila: Strage Ciaculli: Lumia, "tenere attenzione semper alta" from June 30, 2009, accessed on September 27, 2013
