Mario Santo Di Matteo (Altofonte, December 7, 1954), also known as Mezzanasca, is a member of the Mafia from the town of Altofonte in the province of Palermo, Sicily.
Santo Di Matteo took part in the killing of Antimafia judge Giovanni Falcone on May 23, 1992, near Capaci. After his arrest on June 4, 1993, he became the first of Falcone's assassins to become a government witness – a pentito.[1] He revealed all the details of the assassination: who tunnelled beneath the motorway, who packed the 13 drums with TNT and Semtex, who hauled them into place on a skateboard, and who pressed the button.[2]
Contents |
In retaliation the Mafia kidnapped Di Matteo’s 11-year-old Giuseppe Di Matteo on November 23, 1993, to force him to retract his testimony. The boy was told that they were taking him to see his father, who was in hiding. Instead they held the boy for 26 months, during which they tortured him and sent grisly photos to his father to force him to retract his testimony.[3] Di Matteo made a desperate trip to Sicily to try to negotiate his son's release. On January 11, 1996 after 779 days, the boy was finally strangled on the orders of Giovanni Brusca. Subsequently the body was dissolved in a barrel of acid to destroy the evidence.[4]
Di Matteo once had to face Brusca, in court. Bursting into tears Di Matteo told the judge: "I guarantee my collaboration but to this animal I guarantee nothing. If you leave me alone with him for two minutes I'll cut off his head." The confrontation nearly got violent, if not for the guards who restrained Di Matteo.[2][5]
In October 1997, the pentito Di Matteo was rearrested. Although a key witness in several important trials under way, he had returned home to recommence his criminal activities and avenge atrocities carried out on family members.[6]
In March 2002 Di Matteo was released early, in return for cooperating with magistrates. Di Matteo was released along with four others convicted of killing Falcone. Their release has outraged relatives of the victims, who say the pentito system is allowing hardened hitmen to get away with murder.[2]
Under the terms of his deal Di Matteo is not entitled to police protection. However, instead of going into hiding, he returned to his wife, father and house in Altofonte, a village in the mountains just south of Palermo, the Sicilian capital. His protection is an iron gate and two dogs. Di Matteo took up his normal life. He strolled into the main square, took a coffee, read the paper. Everybody recognised him, but few returned his greetings. Anyone living in Sicily knows well that whoever betrays Cosa Nostra is a dead man walking.[2][7]
Before his arrest Di Matteo already had become hesitant about the violent strategy of the Corleonesi. In their testimonies Di Matteo and another pentito Salvatore Cancemi described the victory celebration that followed the Capaci bombing. Totò Riina ordered French champagne and while the others toasted Cancemi and Santo Di Matteo looked at one another and exchanged a gloomy assessment of Riina and their future: "This cuckold will be the ruin of us all."[8]
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||