The list of Mafia informants has become longer in the last couple of months. Maybe they are not Mafia informants but just dissenters, maybe they are still in the middle, maybe they just say part of what they really know, maybe they just have one duty, the one to help informant Gaspare Spatuzza, who has become a real Mafia informant, because he has told all he knew and also started a religious conversion with a priest.

One of the half-informants, Pietro Romeo, said something interesting:

“…In that moment we were talking about weapons and other serious topics. (Spatuzza was asked) if the politician behind the slaughters was Andreotti or Berlusconi. Spatuzza answered: Berlusconi. The reasons of the Mafia were to eliminate the 41 bis. I’ve never know the motifs of politics. We were just the executors”.

 

The question asked Spatuzza is exemplary. The person who asked knows something or pieces of the history that came before the slaughters. Giulio Andreotti, former Prime Minister, was a target of the Mafia, in fact Salvo Lima, his right hand man, was killed by the bosses. The Mafia ascribed him some “harmful” decisions of his government, even because of those “stupid socialists who got the votes but did nothing…” (these are Spatuzza’s words). But why does Berlusconi appear in the statements of the Mafia informants?

 

When Spatuzza was asked the reason why the Mafia used terrorist methods and decided to commit the slaughters in 1992 and 1993, the answer was only one: the 41 bis (hard prison for Mafiosi). But, according to us, this is a weak reason, too weak. The 41 bis is important, because bosses are cut out of the world, they cannot continue managing the organization from within the prison, and it also damages families. But slaughters are not the best way to cancel the 41 bis. They oblige the State to give its best to do something. This is what happened. But is it possible that refined minds did not think about this boomerang effect? It’s a mystery.

 

Translated by Chiara Nunnari from John Milton Institute