Salvatore Cancemi
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Salvatore Cancemi (Palermo, March 19, 1942) was a member of the Sicilian Mafia. He would be the first member of the Sicilian Mafia Commission that turned himself in voluntarily and became a pentito, a collaborator with the Italian judicial authorities. Cancemi made controversial allegations about the collusion of former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and his right-hand man Marcello Dell'Utri with the Mafia, which have not been corroborated until this day.
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[edit] Mafia career
Cancemi’s blood family had no tradition within the Mafia, his father had set up a thriving butcher shop. Cancemi was initiated into the Porta Nuova Mafia family in 1976 at the age of 34. His godfather was Vittorio Mangano. In 1985 he substituted Giuseppe Calò as the boss of the Porta Nuova family after Calò was arrested. He replaced Calò in the Cupola (the Sicilian Mafia Commission) as head of the mandamento of Porta Nuova that included the Mafia families of Palermo Centro and Borgo Vecchio as well.
In 1976 Cancemi was send to jail for stealing a load of meat of a butcher that refused to pay the pizzo – protection money. In prison Tommaso Buscetta took care of the freshly initiated Cancemi. Twenty years later, when Cancemi was reunited with Buscetta at one of the many trials in the 1990s, he confessed that he had personally participated in the strangling of two of Buscetta’s sons in 1982, on the order of Totò Riina. Buscetta embraced Cancemi and said: “You could not refuse the order. I forgive you because I know what it means to be in Cosa Nostra.”
Cancemi was involved in the preparations and executions of the murders on Antimafia magistrates Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino in 1992. He acted as a look-out for the team that placed and detonated the bomb at Capaci which killed Falcone, his wife and three men of his escort. Cancemi initially denied to have participated in the murder on Borsellino, but had to admit his involvement when other pentiti confirmed his participation.
[edit] Pentito
On July 22, 1993, Cancemi walked into the Carabinieri station on Piazza Verdi in Palermo and turned himself in. Riina had been arrested on January 15 that year and his followers stepped up the terrorist strategy that had been started the year before with the killing of Falcone and Borsellino after the Maxi Trial sentence had been confirmed.
On May 28, 1993, the Mafia detonated a bomb severely damaging the Uffizi Gallery in Florence starting a series of bomb attacks on place of cultural heritage. A few days after Cancemi’s surrender bombs detonated at the Villa Reale Museum and the Pavilion of Contemporary Art in Milan, on July 27 and the Church of San Giorgio and the Lateran Vicariate in Rome on July 28. In total the attacks left 10 people dead and 93 injured.
Cancemi opposed the violent terrorist strategy and feared for his life because he had said so. Riina’s brother in law Leoluca Bagarella also suspected that Cancemi had been behind the arrest of the Mafia boss.
[edit] Controversial declarations
Many of the allegations of Cancemi are controversial. Cancemi told prosecutors that the choice of the 1993 mainland bomb targets had been ‘suggested’ to Cosa Nostra since the organisation did not possess sufficient ‘refinement’ to select them autonomously. He said that Totò Riina and others had implied that they had support from individuals inside the State institutions. Riina and Provenzano told him that they had found ‘political contacts’ through which things would improve and legislation regarding the harsh 41-bis prison regime would be changed.
In 1996, Cancemi declared that Silvio Berlusconi and his right-hand man Marcello Dell'Utri were in direct contact with Riina who ordered the bombing which killed Antimafia magistrate, Paolo Borsellino. After a two-year investigation, magistrates closed the inquiry without charges. They did not find evidence to corroborate Cancemi’s allegations. Similarly, a two-year investigation, also launched on evidence from Cancemi, into Berlusconi’s alleged association with the Mafia was closed in 1996.[1]
Salvatore Cancemi disclosed that Fininvest, through Marcello Dell'Utri and mafioso Vittorio Mangano, had paid Cosa Nostra 200 million lire (100 000 euro) annually. The alleged contacts, according to Cancemi, were to lead to legislation favourable to Cosa Nostra, in particular the harsh 41-bis prison regime. The underlying premise was that Cosa Nostra would support Berlusconi's Forza Italia party in return for political favours.[2]
Despite convictions for participating in several murders, for instance the ones on Christian Democrat politician Salvatore Lima (DC - Democrazia Cristiana), the magistrates Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, and police officer Ninni Cassarà, Cancemi is not incarcerated. When asked about the current apparent 'pax mafiosa', Salvatore Cancemi said: "I find this silence more terrifying than the bombs."[3]
[edit] Biography
- (Italian) Riina mi fece i nomi di… Confessioni di un ex boss della Cupola (2002) Salvatore Cancemi and Giorgio Bongiovanni, Massari editore, ISBN 88-457-0178-6
[edit] References
- ^ An Italian Story, The Economist, April 26, 2001
- ^ Berlusconi friend on trial for 'aiding Mafia', The Guardian, May 10, 2001
- ^ Sins of the godfathers, The Observer, February 15, 2004
- Dickie, John (2004). Cosa Nostra. A history of the Sicilian Mafia, London: Coronet, ISBN 0-340-82435-2
- Jamieson, Alison (2000). The Antimafia: Italy’s fight against organized crime, London: Macmillan, ISBN 0-333-80158-X.
- Stille, Alexander (1995). Excellent Cadavers. The Mafia and the Death of the First Italian Republic, New York: Vintage ISBN 0-09-959491-9
