Death triangle
An area in western Sicily is called a death triangle . An unusually high number of murders have taken place there since the First World War ; especially in the period after the Second World War , the number of murders there rose steadily. The main reason for this high rate of violence is the Sicilian Cosa Nostra . The corners of this triangle are the towns of Altavilla Milicia , Bagheria and Casteldaccia . Each of these cities has been home to a mafia family since the 19th century and is a mafia stronghold. Further south, in relative proximity, is the city of Corleone , which is also a notorious stronghold of the Cosa Nostra. This had one of the highest murder rates in the world in the 1940s and 1950s. Corleone was therefore literally called "the tombstone" until the late 1960s.
During this time, the murders in this area were mostly transfigured into folklore with the term " blood revenge " . In 1963 a “Mafia cemetery” was discovered by chance in the area of the Death Triangle, as the gruesome discovery was soon called by the Carabinieri and then by the Italian mass media . It was a hole in the rock where the remains of dozens of human corpses lay. The dead, which - as far as can still be ascertained - had all died an unnatural death, were probably victims of the Lupara bianca , the hidden murders of the Cosa Nostra.
In the early 1980s in particular, the murder rate in the death triangle increased extremely due to the so-called Second Great Mafia War from 1981-1983 that was triggered by the Corleonesians . On December 25, 1981, the so-called "Christmas Massacre" occurred in Bagheria. A squad consisting of several men shot dead three high-ranking mafiosi sitting in the car in the old town of Bagheria. An uninvolved passerby was also shot. In addition, the victorious party in the Mafia war, the Corleonesians, set up "the Bagheria concentration camp ", as it was soon called , in a factory near Bagheria . According to witness statements, interrogations were carried out in this factory, opponents were tortured and the bodies of many victims dissolved in hydrochloric acid tanks. It also served as the headquarters of Bernardo Provenzano , who was in hiding.
In order to cope with the ongoing violence in the death triangle and in the entire province of Palermo , General Carlo Alberto Dalla Chiesa was appointed Prefect of Palermo in May 1982 . He had already excelled in the fight against the Cosa Nostra in earlier decades and in the late 1970s had become a national hero thanks to his successful fight against left-wing extremist terrorism by the Red Brigades . Dalla Chiesa had roadblocks erected in the whole area. The Cosa Nostra responded immediately with further assassinations.
She then deposited the bodies of her victims in front of the local police stations and barracks of the Carabinieri. For example, on August 7, 1982, an anonymous caller rang the guard at the Carabinieri in Casteldaccia and said, “If you want to have fun, take a look at the car that is at your door” . There were two bodies in the car.
These scenes were repeated several times in the following days and after a few days another caller answered a newspaper : “We are the killers of the death triangle. Operation Carlo Alberto in honor of the Prefect of Palermo is now almost complete, I said almost complete ” . Shortly after Dalla Chiesa was murdered together with his wife and a bodyguard in Palermo on September 3, 1982, an anonymous caller answered again with the words: "The Carlo Alberto operation in honor of the Prefect of Palermo is now complete" .
In the mid-1980s, after the Second Mafia War ended, the murder rate fell, but the death triangle remained in the headlines: On September 29, 1987, Mario Prestifilippo, known as the super killer of the Mafia, was shot in Bagheria while he was on a motorcycle drove from one hiding place to another. Prestifilippo had become a victim of the Corleonesians, who eliminated their most powerful former allies.
After the top management of the Cosa Nostra had changed due to the arrests of Salvatore Riina and Leoluca Bagarella and Bernardo Provenzano had become the so-called "boss of the bosses" in 1995, the murder rate then fell significantly. The Pax Mafiosa ruled Sicily under Provenzano's aegis ; Since the 1980s, Provenzano himself kept hiding for long periods of time in Bagheria and the immediate vicinity, where he had an extensive network of supporters. Only when this network was broken up by the police in the "Grande Mandamento" operation in 2005 did he return to the immediate vicinity of his hometown Corleone. After Provenzano was arrested near Corleone in June 2006, however, new power struggles erupted within the Palermo mafia and the police arrested dozens of men of honor in Bagheria.
Individual evidence
- ↑ John Dickie: Cosa Nostra. The history of the mafia . Fischer (S.), Frankfurt 2006, ISBN 3-100-13906-2
- ^ John Follain: The last Godfathers , Hodder & Stoughton, London 2008 ISBN 978-0-340-97919-8
- ^ Henning Klüver : The Godfather - last act , C. Bertelsmann, 2007 ISBN 978-3-570-00971-0
- ↑ a b Alexander Stille : The judges: Death, the Mafia and the Italian Republic . Translation of Karl-Heinz Siber. CH Beck, Munich 1997, ISBN 3-406-42303-5
literature
- Alexander Stille: The Judges: Death, the Mafia and the Italian Republic . CH Beck, Munich 1997, ISBN 3-406-42303-5
- John Dickie: Cosa Nostra. The history of the mafia . Fischer (S.), Frankfurt 2006, ISBN 3-100-13906-2